American director Jules Dassin’s 1955
French gangster flick Rififi (Thursday, March 17, Dryden
Theatre, 8 p.m., 271-4090) is one of those movies that inspired film geeks, or
what the French call geeques du cinema (no, they don’t), long before anyone ever heard of one. Its influence is
apparent in films by contemporaries like Jean-Pierre Melville, who helmedthe masterful Le Samourai and Bob le
Flambeur (which was written by Auguste Le Breton, who also wrote Rififi), as well as cinematic
descendants such as Quentin Tarantino (surprise, surprise), who appropriated a
few tricks for his own crime caper, Reservoir
Dogs.
Set in an achromatic Paris, Rififi is your classic “one last job”
story: Ex-con tries to go on the straight-and-narrow but can’t resist the lure
of the game and the promise of a final big payday. After Tony the Stephanois
returns from the pokey, little brother Jo the Swede (note to self: earn goon
nickname) attempts to enlist his help in a jewelry store robbery. Tony
initially declines, then comes back with a couple of ideas on how to ensure an
even bigger knockover, with the store’s safe as the new target.
Whenever anyone talks about Rififi, they invariably mention the
expertly crafted, mindblowing heist scene that clocks in at 30 tense minutes…
and is done completely without dialogue. (Apparently some were concerned that
the intricate sequence is basically a how-to for aspiring thieves.) And like
any decent film noir, the conflict doesn’t arrive via the cops but by internal
strife, greed, and even badder guys who got hip to the crime and now want a
piece of the action.
Dassin — who also plays the Italian
safecracker here under the pseudonym Perlo Vita — was a rising star in 1940s
Hollywood thanks to films like Naked City and Thieves’ Highway, but by 1950 he
was unemployed and living in Europe due to blacklisting. And despite winning
the prize for directing at the 1955 Cannes International Film Festival, Rififi wasn’t able to secure an American
theatrical distributor until the end of the century because of Dassin’s
political leanings.
The final thoughts here do not belong
to me but to New York Times critic
Bosley Crowther. They’re excerpted from a review that ran at the time of Rififi‘s initial release, and if you
listen very closely, you can almost hear this as a voiceover on one of those
cheesy, fast-talking trailers from the ’50s that feature droppers, tomatoes,
roscoes, Chinese angles and words that come flying at you from the screen.
“Do you want to see a tough gangster
picture? Do you want to see a crime film that makes the characters of Mickey
Spillane seem like sissies and, at the same time, gives you the thrill of being
an inside participant in a terrific Parisian robbery? Then go to see Rififi!”
— Dayna Papaleo
This article appears in Mar 16-22, 2005.
