Rififi (1955)

Rififi (aka Du rififi chez les hommes, 1955)
Directed by Jules Dassin
Written by Jules Dassin, Rene Wheeler, Auguste Le Breton
Based on the Novel by Augeste Le Breton

After a seven year prison stint for robbery, hardened old timer Tony (Jean Servais) meets up with his former colleagues only to decline a bank robbery job. Upon finding his former girl (Marie Sabouret) shacked up with a sleazy night club owner (Pierre Grasset), Tony re-joins his gang to pull off a heist at a nearby, highly secured jewelery shop. What follows is non-stop action, bringing in all the quintessential elements of the crime/heist genre: dishonor among thieves, double crosses, backstabbing, murder, theft, kidnapping, and vengeance.

Blacklisted American director Jules Dassin directed this crime thriller adaptation while living in exile in France. Having directed a string of successful crime films in America in the late 1940s (Thieves' Highway, Brute Force, The Naked City, Night and the City), the material was nothing new to Dassin -- though Rififi marks a step forward in structure and style with a simultaneous step backwards in themes. That's not to say the film avoids moral issues all together, as Dassin specifically deals with the blacklist backlash, playing one of the criminals himself -- meeting his bloody, violent demise after ratting out his colleagues. Never the less, Rififi remains a landmark crime film, most well known and appreciated for the thirty minute, no-dialogue, no-music heist scene which is a brilliant exercise in tension, sound, paranoia, and professionalism.

[115 minutes. B&W. In French/Italian with English Subtitles.]