#dede allen

[tyger-land]

𝘽𝙤𝙣𝙣𝙞𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙡𝙮𝙙𝙚 1967

[citizenscreen]

Remembering film editor Dede Allen, born 100 years ago today. #botd

Allen edited films such as The Hustler (1961), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Serpico (1973, Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

[gregorygalloway]

Serpico was released in New York City on 5 December 1973 before wider release in January 1974.

Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler adapted Peter Maas's nonfiction book Serpico: The Cop Who Defied the System, which had been written with the cooperation with Frank Serpico, a New York City policeman who fought corruption within the department and ultimately became a whistleblower. Film rights for the book had been purchased before the book was published in March 1973.

Al Pacino initially rejected the part, but after meeting Serpico he accepted and continued to meet with Serpico in order to prepare for the role. John Avildson was hired to direct, but his increasing frustrations with the script, shooting locations, and other production issues led to his dismissal and Sidney Lumet was brought on to deliver a finished film in under 5 months (on a small budget and more than 100 different shooting locations spanning more than a decade of time - 1960-1971). Instead of working with completed footage (as is usual), editor Dede Allen cut the film as it was shot - Lumet would send her footage as it was shot and give Allen only a couple of days to edit the footage.

Serpico was a commercial success, while many of the real-life participants were critical, especially Serpico himself, for many fictionalized elements of the story. Al Pacino was nominated for Best Actor (which went to Jack Lemmon for Save the Tiger) and Salt and Wexler were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award (William Peter Blatty received the award for The Exorcist).

[sesiondemadrugada]

Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967).

[cristinablackthornkingson]

Barry and Emma's relationship in The Prom is peak mlm and wlw solidarity ❤❤🎭🏳️‍🌈

[tcm]

Women Make Film – In More Ways Than One By Kim Luperi

“There is a forgotten history of cinema,” the trailer for Mark Cousins’ 14-hour documentary WOMEN MAKE FILM (2018) expounds, reminding viewers that thousands of women have directed movies over the past 13 decades. Today, TCM kicks off “Women Make Film,” an extraordinary three-month series framed around Cousins’ documentary showcasing the breadth of women’s contributions to cinema through 100 diverse films and filmmakers from 44 countries.

All of the directors represented exhibited the passion, drive and talent to cultivate their own vision in a male-dominated business. But it wasn’t always male-dominated; women have been there in all respects from the start, despite the fact that for decades historians, and even Hollywood’s own collective memory since the 1930s, have almost wholly neglected their contributions.

Here’s a look at three areas in which women made early inroads that deserve more recognition today. These are just the tip of the iceberg; many great resources are out there to learn more.

Editing

“One of the most important positions in the motion-picture industry is held almost entirely by women,” The Los Angeles Times wrote in 1926. Indeed, through the era of one-reelers, the technical and monotonous task of editing often fell to the deft hands of uncredited young women. With the advent of features (and later, sound), editing required a more intricate, creative technique, and the new technology brought more men into the fold, but women still contributed in big ways – see: Barbara McLean editing Mary Pickford’s first sound picture, COQUETTE (‘29).

The year the Academy established the Best Film Editing category, Anne Bauchens was one of three nominees (for 1934’s CLEOPATRA), and six years later, she’d become the first woman to win for NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE (‘40). Bauchens asserted in a 1941 interview, “Women are better at editing motion pictures than men,” alluding to their patience and a strong emotional sense that allowed women to connect with different stories and understand what audiences want. Many women held high-level supervisory editing positions at studios, including Margaret Booth (MGM, 1936-1969) and Viola Lawrence (Columbia, 1925-1960), opening the doors for later accomplished editors like Dede Allen, Thelma Schoonmaker and Anne V. Coates. Several directors represented in this series, including Dorothy Arzner, Leontine Sagan and Chantal Ackerman, worked as editors during their career, either cutting their teeth in the department on the way up or cutting their own work.

Cinematography

As opposed to editing, camera work has long been a male-dominated area. That said, the Women Film Pioneers Project online (WFPP) points out a “women with cameras” trend in the 1910s in which movie magazines highlighted actresses/camerawomen Grace Davison and Francelia Billington as rarities in this field. “I suppose that it is still a novelty to see a girl more interested in a mechanical problem than in make-up,” Billington remarked a 1914 Photoplay piece.

However, women in the newsreel and documentary worlds like Dorothy Dunn, Katherine R. Bleecker and Osa Johnson didn’t hesitate to pick up a camera and film. Outside Hollywood, Angela Murray Gibson, who ran her own production company in North Dakota, shot all of her own movies. But these women were among the few who engaged in such work for decades. As J. E. Smyth observes in Nobody’s Girl Friday, the American Society of Cinematographers accepted its first female member, Brianne Murphy, in 1980, and as of 2018, women make up only 4% of its membership. Progress is being made though, as Rachel Morrison recently became the first woman nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar for MUDBOUND (2017).

Producing

Producers do a little bit of everything in the movie business, and the same could be said for women working during the medium’s early days. In an effort to gain creative control and develop the stories they wanted to see, several women set up their own production companies during the 1910s and early 1920s; in fact, according to the WFPP, more independent film companies were named after women – actresses, writers, director, producers – than men at that time. Though most of these companies were gone by 1923 due to a variety of factors, select notable films remain, like Marion E. Wong’s THE CURSE OF THE QUON GWON (’17), the first Chinese-American feature, produced by Wong’s Mandarin Film Company.

Women also held powerful producing positions at studios during the silent era, from Lois Weber running Universal’s Rex brand with her husband to June Mathis, who discovered Rudolph Valentino. Flash forward to the 1940s and 1950s, however, and only a handful of female producers operated in the studio system, including Joan Harrison, who produced on her own after working with Alfred Hitchcock, and Virginia Van Upp, best remembered for GILDA (’46). The tides have been changing, though: According to The Los Angeles Times, as of 2020 women make up 43% of the Producers Guild of America. Many directors included in this celebration have also produced their own work, including Jacqueline Audry and Lucrecia Martel.

[davidhudson]

Dede Allen, December 3, 1923 - April 17, 2010.

At Columbia University in 1973.

[genevieveetguy]

Frank, let's face it. Who can trust a cop who don't take money?

Serpico, Sidney Lumet (1973)