National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Twentieth Century Fox released Edward Scissorhands in December 1990, marking Tim Burton's fourth feature and cementing his signature aesthetic of gothic whimsy within mainstream Hollywood. The film paired Burton with composer Danny Elfman and cinematographer Stefan Czapsky to construct a suburban fairy tale that became one of the defining American films of its era, launching Johnny Depp toward international stardom and demonstrating that studio pictures could sustain genuine visual poetry.

This cell preserves three consecutive frames of the Edward Scissorhands title card, showing the distinctive logo lettering against a pure black field with the optical soundtrack strip running along the lower edge. The final frame carries a partial reel-change cue notch at the right margin, placing this strip at a projection transition point — a small but telling detail of how the film moved through theatrical exhibition.