Dede Allen, who died Saturday at age 86, is being described as an accomplished film editor, and she certainly was that. She was best known as the Oscar-nominated editor of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), a film that deftly navigates many different modes (gangster film, satire, psychosexual drama, cornpone comedy) and deploys adventurous cuts and slow motion to transform violence from an event into a statement. Allen also edited other notable films, including The Hustler, Rachel, Rachel, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Night Moves, Slap Shot, Reds, The Breakfast Club and Henry and June. And she was the head of postproduction at Warner Bros. for eight years in the 1990s.
But that abbreviated résumé doesn't begin to capture the soul of her work. Like a great actor or composer, Allen could adapt her talent to suit a given subject without stifling her personality or her aesthetic.
She could build an action scene with the best of them: think of the "Attica!" sequence in Dog Day, or the whistle-blowing cop hero of Serpico disarming a hostile fellow officer; or the slow-building train station sequence from Reds, Louise scanning every passenger car and knot of bodies for a glimpse of her lover John Reed, her hopes sinking with each successive reaction shot. She had fearsome technical chops. The aborted police raid on the bank in Dog Day is a blizzard of quick cuts covering action inside and outside the building, some of which appear on-screen for a second or less.
Dennis Hopper's recent announcement of 
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