Yesterday we watched the excellent fight scene from “Bad Day At Black Rock” in which an aging, one-armed Spencer Tracy kicks martial arts ass. Today we’ll watch what I consider to be the Grandaddy of all fight scenes, George Stevens virtuoso bar fight from ‘Shane’. I first saw ‘Shane’ on TV when I was fourteen years old and the next time it came on I made sure to tape it with our brand new Betamax machine. The reason wasn’t necessarily to watch the whole movie again (thought I did love it and continue to do so). It was to watch and re-watch and study this bar fight and the way it was shot and edited. I still can’t fathom how Stevens laid it out, invented the action, covered it from so many different angles and then edited it within an inch of its life. Much of it defies the filmmaking rules that then existed and that directors dared not break; Stevens freely crosses the so-called line of axis, giving us the jarring and disorienting feel that must occur when someone is facing off against someone else. Many of the edits don’t match–and don’t even try to. Instead they invent their own logic based on the rhythm of the punches (I’m speaking specifically about the brilliant section from 2: 30–2:45). This gives a sense of what it must be like to be in that position–point of view distorted, perception of events growing jagged and becoming divorced from reality. I have to assume this took days if not weeks to shoot–Stevens was a notoriously slow director, painstakingly gathering mountains of footage to the annyoance of practically everyone involved in the movie–producers, actors, grips etc. But he knew the secret that all directors eventually learn; you can be a hero to all while shooting the movie and let people go home early…but once the production shuts down everyone else moves on to other things while you and your editor are stuck alone in the editing room having to make do with the footage you collected (or failed to collect) on the shoot days…

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