Without exaggeration, I can say that Dede Allen changed my life (without me even knowing who she was), and contributed to me making the choices I did. I was always a movie fan, even as a kid, and always into acting and theatre, but Dog Day Afternoon, seen when I was 12 years old, babysitting (and far too young to see that movie, actually), blew the top of my head off, and I still, decades later, have been unable to find the pieces. Thank God. It’s rare that you are shown something that tells you: Here. Here. This is what you want to do. This is what matters to you. Pursue it. In whatever fashion. This is important. This is not just what you love – but it is WHO YOU ARE.
It reminds me of the great quote from John Martin, the New York Times dance critic in the 50s, and his response to the Bolshoi Ballet, who first came to New York in 1959:
The impact of the Bolshoi has been overwhelming. And it will be something of a calamity if we ever allow ourselves to recover.
The effect of Dog Day Afternoon was overwhelming. And it would have been a calamity if I had allowed myself to recover.
Directed by Sidney Lumet, Dede Allen edited the film, and is responsible for so much of its power. Her career spanned decades. She worked right up to the end (check out her astonishing credits). She was a pioneer. She worked with everyone. She is responsible for the editing of some of my favorite movies of all time, and also responsible for giving us the look/energy/sense in certain scenes, that leave a deep impact for the rest of your life. The train scene in Reds, with Diane Keaton’s slow agonized walk down the platform, and finally, the reveal of John Reed behind her. It’s brilliant. I have studied that scene on a shot by shot basis, trying to understand its magic. Where do they cut? Where do they hold steady? Where do they look? Where do they choose to look? Much of why it is so fantastic has to do with the length of the scene, how long it goes on, how willing Beatty (and Allen) are to keep the suspense going. It feels like it should end sooner than it does, but that is only my own conventional attitude. It goes on longer. It keens like a violin string almost breaking. When Reed is revealed, he comes not where you think he should come from. You don’t see him get off the train. He is blurry, in the background, and then, as she is following the passage of a stretcher going by, she turns, and, whoosh, there he is, he comes into focus, staring at Keaton. Film editing literally does not get any better than that. (Whole scene below the jump.)
But that is just one example in a career of many. She helped create moments that are indelible. The woman edited Slap Shot, for God’s sake, and that alone makes me love her forever.
Please don’t miss Matt Zoller Seitz’s heartfelt appreciation of Dede Allen and her career in Salon. I really liked his observations on how, yes, she edited action like nobody’s business. Dog Day Afternoon was a complicated film, shot on the streets of New York, with hundreds and hundreds of extras, and helicopter shots, and heat wave, and all of that needs to be made real and palpable to the audience. But I liked Seitz’s words on how she also was a “performance editor”:
But she was more often described as a “performance editor.” That’s high praise. It takes special intuition to cull raw footage of actors’ performances and piece the best stuff together to create compelling, memorable characters — ones you can imagine having lives beyond the edges of the screen. Allen had that intuition, that gift.
Her best work has a people watcher’s sensibility: a rapt yet affectionate eye. Think of Communist revolutionary John Reed on his deathbed in “Reds,” asking Louise Bryant to come to New York with him (“I’ve got a taxi waiting”), his voice buoyant, his eyes frightened; or private eye Harry Moseby in “Night Moves” confronting his wife and her boyfriend at home, but pausing beforehand to lounge on her couch, survey the lover’s feast arrayed on the coffee table and help himself to a glass of wine; or Fast Eddie Felson in “The Hustler,” going on a picnic with his girlfriend Sarah Packard and expounding on how “anything can be great”; or the assistant principal in “The Breakfast Club” interrogating the detention kids, hoping to learn which of them removed a screw from the library door.
Go read the whole thing. He has some great clips, too.
She will be much missed.
A true artist. A true storyteller.
Reds clip below the jump. It is nearly impossible not to get sucked into the story (another tribute to Allen) – and Diane Keaton’s growing terror is so well done, there’s one shot in particular where you can feel her understanding the reality, of what she has lost – and I have goosebumps just writing this sentence. But try to watch this and look only at the editing. Each shot chosen for a specific storytelling reason. Where Beatty chose to cut, and how Allen chose to piece the sequence together, what she chose to show (the stretchers, the cracked windows, the slow pan down the train … cutting back and forth to Keaton’s face as she walks … the scene is totally from Keaton’s point of view, the camera moving slowly and inevitably, following Keaton’s eyes … going down, to the stretchers, back up to the train …)
It is a masterpiece of story, yes, and a masterful piece of acting. But it’s the editing that makes it possible. How often are great moments left on the cutting room floor. How often do scenes NOT work because they are edited shoddily, or too obviously.
Here, in a very complicated sequence, Allen not only never makes a mistake, but she is the primary reason that the scene actually lands. There were hours and hours of footage for this one sequence. HOURS. She had to pick and choose, and she must have had to make agonizing choices, in order to make the moment happen. She would have tried different things, conferenced with Beatty about it, should we go back to Keaton again? Should we have more of the train? She would have collaged it, through mountains of footage, until she came up with … this.
That’s art.
