In September 1976, Susan Morse, a 25-year-old Yale graduate, had a decision to make: attend a second year at N.Y.U.’s film school or accept a position as an apprentice film editor with Ralph Rosenblum on the new Woody Allen movie, then untitled, later known as Annie Hall.
Rosenblum’s résumé was formidable—he’d edited Long Day’s Journey into Night, A Thousand Clowns, and The Producers, along with four of Allen’s previous movies, beginning with Take the Money and Run. “I’ve always said the two turning points of my career were working with Ralph Rosenblum and Gordon Willis,” Allen tells me. This would be his penultimate collaboration with Rosenblum, and the first of seven with Willis, the exceptionally talented cinematographer of The Godfather, Klute, and All the President’s Men.
