From 'Lawrence of Arabia' to 'Out of Sight,' film editor Anne V. Coates operated on razor-sharp instincts

When the director David Lean and his editor Anne V. Coates were first processing the footage from “Lawrence of Arabia,” they had already envisioned a key visual transition early in the film: a stately, dreamlike dissolve from one shot to the next. But when they screened the dailies, they saw the...