The name Dede Allen will probably mean nothing to most of our readers, but she was just as integral to the movement that revolutionized Hollywood in the late 60s/70s as her more famous filmmaking peers like Warren Beatty, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola. Allen was a film editor and in my humble opinion, the best editor of the last forty or some odd years. Her credits include such classics as The Hustler, Bonnie And Clyde, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Reds and Wonder Boys. Allen passed away last Saturday at age 86 after suffering a stroke so this seems as good a time as any for me to honor her legacy.

Like many in my generation, I was first introduced to Allen’s work through the 1985 John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. It may seem strange that someone like Allen, who was associated with the type of adult dramas that won Oscars, would work on a teen flick, but Breakfast Club producer Ned Tanen knew that he needed someone of her stature considering this was going to be a film that was going to mostly take place in one location (a high school library) and be directed by a novice (Hughes sole previous directing credit was Sixteen Candles and it had yet to be released). Here’s what Tanen says on this subject in the book You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried:

“I did a smart thing on The Breakfast Club. I called an editor I knew very well,” Dede Allen, “and said, I’m going to send you a script and I want you to do this movie.’ She called back and said, ‘What am I supposed to do with a bunch of kids in a library?’ I said, ‘What you always do.’” Tanen knew it: If anyone could turn countless hours of footage of kids sitting in one room into a captivating film, it was Allen.

When I first saw Breakfast Club I was just a kid and didn’t even know what an editor did, but the film worked like gangbusters. A movie about a bunch of kids sitting around talking in a library was just as compelling as a movie comprised of shoot-outs and car crashes. When I look at Breakfast Club now, it’s clear to me how important the editing is. It’s a big part of why it does work so well.

It’s easy to forget how much Allen revolutionized the art of film editing because much of what she “invented” is the norm now. Before she came along, film editing usually consisted of this formula: a wide shot to establish the scene, cut to medium shots, then close-ups.

But Allen would shake things up: start the sound/music for the next scene in the previous scene or start a scene with a close-up or a jump cut, for example. She wasn’t the first to do this—the French New Wave directors were already employing these techniques—but she was the first to fully integrate this style into mainstream Hollywood films.

Part of the reason a film like Dog Day Afternoon works so well is because of what Allen does—she employs a staccato tempo throughout. She cuts when the audience least expects it; creating a sense of imbalance and tension. If you actually study Breakfast Club carefully, you’ll see that Allen uses a similar tempo there as she does in Dog Day Afternoon. I don’t know if it was a conscious decision on her part, but the fact that she edited Breakfast Club like a thriller is what gives it its momentum and never allows it to be boring like some other films mainly consisting of characters talking.

But the film that may be her lasting legacy is 1967’s Bonnie And Clyde. No other American film, except for Citizen Kane, was arguably as important as Bonnie And Clyde in changing the landscape of Hollywood. Again, a lot of what was revolutionary about this film is the norm now so it may be harder for today’s moviegoer to really see what was so special about it. But you have to understand that Bonnie And Clyde was the first. It was the first film to really say “fuck you” to the traditional Hollywood way of filmmaking that had been around since the start of the industry. Everything from its exploration of once taboo themes (like impotency and the parallels to the Vietnam War) to its innovative style (hugely influenced by foreign films) drew a line in the sand: the old guard didn’t get it, but the younger generation embraced it with a vengeance. And in the end, the young won out. And again, one of the main reasons the film works so well is because of its editing.

One of the areas where Bonnie And Clyde was revolutionary was in its use of violence. Before this film, Hollywood’s restrictions on what you couldn’t show on screen when it came to violence were pretty clear and strict: if you shot someone, you couldn’t show any blood. If you shot someone, you also couldn’t show the shooting in one single shot—it had to be broken up so you would have to show the shooter pulling the trigger in one shot then cut to another shot where the victim gets shot (sans blood of course).

Bonnie And Clyde gave the finger to all those rules. I’ll conclude my post with this clip from the ending of the film, which really demonstrates what Allen brought to this movie. The film’s director Arthur Penn said that the reason Bonnie And Clyde is more than your typical gangster movie is because of this scene. When the studio suits saw this, they demanded it be re-cut in a more traditional way. They were afraid because the scene was too violent, too raw. The filmmakers stood their ground and backed Allen’s cut. And a classic was born and Hollywood would never be the same again:

R.I.P. Dede Allen.