Farewell to two greats of the world of cinema

One name was familiar – Lynn Redgrave, the childlike lass from 1966's Georgy Girl succumbed to breast cancer after a seven-and-a-half year struggle. She was 67. She died a month after her brother, Corin, and a year after her niece, Natasha Richardson, following a skiing accident. The Redgrave family must be reeling.

The other name was less familiar to the average movie buff but her output was not. Dede Allen, doyenne of film editors, died aged 86 following a stroke. It was Allen who revolutionised edgy American cinema in the Sixties with her work on Robert Rossen's The Hustler and Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde.

It was her dextrous fingers and lightning mind who brought Fast Eddie Felson's pool hall milieu so vividly to life and gave Paul Newman one of his true iconic roles. And it was Allen who provided the unforgettable "dance of death" finale to Bonnie and Clyde as the gangster duo meet their end in a furious fusillade of gunfire.

Two very different women, separated by decades and thousands of miles, who each brought an individual dynamic to the art of cinema.

It was said that Redgrave began her career in the shadow of her elder sister, Vanessa. Yet Lynn enjoyed a solid 40-plus years of fine work on film, on stage and on television. It didn't matter that her two Oscar nominations – for Georgy Girl in 1967 and Gods and Monsters in 1999 – came 32 years apart. What did matter was the depth and range of work in between. The disparate movies included The Happy Hooker, Shine, and Kinsey.

In between was a glittering theatre career that included her one-woman show Shakespeare for My Father, inspired by her father, Michael Redgrave, and an eclectic collection of TV appearances in everything from Kojak to Ugly Betty.

Dede Allen beat the odds in a male-dominated industry to become both a pioneer and a leader. From her debut, in 1948, through to The Hustler, in 1961, she edited just three other pictures. In between, there were industrial films and commercials. The Hustler established Dede's style and reputation. She was credited with revolutionising editing through dramatic jump-cuts and created a discernible rhythm in the pool games.

Bonnie and Clyde, with its elongated death scene by machine-gun – a reported 50 cuts in just over 60 seconds – made Dede Allen a star.

She would edit six films for Arthur Penn, while on Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon she adopted a staccato style dubbed "shock cutting". All of it made her a legend among filmmakers.

Neither Redgrave nor Allen won an Oscar, despite five nominations between them. But the work endures.