Rififi (The Criterion Collection)
by Jules Dassin
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Actor: Carl Möhner, Janine Darcey, Jean Servais, Pierre Grasset, Robert ManuelDirector: Jules Dassin
Brand: SERVAIS,JEAN
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 122 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-04-24
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of Rififi (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: Pure Cinema: "Jouissance" and more.
Summary: 5 Stars
If you came into the theater during the last five minutes of this film, you would see a 5-year-old with a toy six-shooter pretending to be an American cowboy while circling the Arc de Triomphe in a convertible driven by a cooperative chauffeur. The scene would be highly misleading--but on second thought, maybe not. There's a lot about "Rififi" that captures the first joy of watching movies at those Saturday matinees that were the highlight of every child's week.
Were it not for the humiliation and beating of a woman who had proven unfaithful to her lover (Tony, played by Jean Servais) during his prison time (he's a professional thief), we might assume this is a comic caper film. After the exhilarating, protracted safe-cracking in the middle of the film, the director sets up a mis en scene and cutting sequence identical to that in the climax of John Huston's "The Maltese Falcon," in which the thieves sit around the table salivating at the thought they are about to uncover the "real" Maltese Falcon. But this time there is no Humphrey Bogart, and the weighted sack turns out to be the real deal--priceless jewels. Even the flim's ceaselessly grim-looking protagonist, Tony, offers the barest trace of a smile.
But soon the fun comes to a screeching halt, as the house of cards falls apart one by one. The thief whose specialty is safe-cracking (played by Jules Dassin, the film's director) cracks himself when he can't resist the temptation to go back for that one extra jewel, a ring, which he then gives to a girl friend, who's the "property" of a rival gang. At this point the story becomes as "moral" as "The Maltese Falcon" (Amazon's prefatory commentary equating the tale with "nihilism" is ridiculous), exposing the self-destructive consequences of those who can't control their greed--or the childish impulses that lead make-believe cowboys to become grown-up hoodlums. It's just a matter of time before the last man standing (out of seven) expires at the moment of the film's completion (appropriate, since the last survivor, Tony, is director of the heist, just as Dassin is director of the film).
But such a summary does the film a huge injustice. "Rififi" has an ingredient lacking in the tightly-scripted, ultra-efficient, supremely-acted "Maltese Falcon": breath-taking visual composition, editing, and style that are a sheer joy to watch throughout. Moreover, it's cinematic spectacle that allows the viewer to become a participant in the "back-stage" action--the collaborative process so essential to the power of cinema itself.
Above all, it is the robbery of the jewelry shop that is analogous to filmmaking--from the collaborating it entails, to the specialties required, not to mention the hard work, the self-control and discipline, the tensions and uncertainties about the outcome, the ultimate triumph.
For the film's protagonist and director of the intricate operation, Tony, that is enough. Each of the other thieves has a grand plan for what he will do with his share of the take (which, like the profits of commercial filmmaking after the middle man's cut, is drastically diluted by the need to go through a fence specialist). But when the question is finally put to Tony, his response is: "I dunno." Then he adds, "the risk was worth it."
Of course, apart from the process itself, great movies have meaning, and "Rififi" makes its points unmistakably clear--about the roots of greed and gangsterism (and, for those familiar with the director's previous political life in America, loyalty and betrayal). The best films, moreover, are at their core an imitation of life, and "Rififi" individualizes its characters, its hoodlums, its scenes and activities with vivid verisimilitude. Even the female characters run the gamut, challenging some film stereotypes-from the victimized house wife/mother to the gang moll willing to risk her life (and pay for it) to the night club chanteuse (who plays out the rififi--i.e. rough, dangerous living--that she will soon unwittingly unleash by accepting the ring as a "fake") to the aforementioned beaten woman whose presence of mind hatches the clever ploy that will ultimately lead to the rival's location and the final shoot-out.
The cineastes, or film academics, would have you believe that in French filmmaking of the 1950s, it's the "new wave" directors who matter. But Jules Dassin makes the filmmaking of Godard's "Breathless" or of Francois Truffaut's "Shoot the Piano Player" or of Alain Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad" all look like the work of amateurs (which it is). Not only is Dassin a more gifted, "professional" director, capable of employing light and shadow and Hollywood "classique decoupage" to perfection, but he engages the spectator more completely in the magic of cinema. Andre Bazin may not have known it, but Dassin is the most deserving French "auteur" of the period. More than any other director, he puts into play what the French philosopher, Roland Barthes, would later describe as the "juoissance" of the text.
(This DVD print has such wonderful resolution of the blacks, whites, and greys along with sharp definition of the image as to make Blu Ray gratuitous. No need to wait for a later edition, whenever that may be.)
Description of Rififi (The Criterion Collection)
After an elaborate jewelry heist, a rival gangster attempts to get the loot through murder, kidnapping, and torture.Genre: Foreign Film - French
Rating: UN
Release Date: 24-APR-2001
Media Type: DVD
Hollywood's loss was Europe's gain when Jules Dassin fled America because of the House Un-American Activities Committee blacklist at the end of the 1940s. His films helped bring the moral ambiguity of the postwar American thriller to Europe, inspiring a new generation of critics and filmmakers. Writing several years before he made The 400 Blows, François Truffaut praised Dassin for the way his films "combin[ed] the documentary approach with lyricism," a method that would inform many of the new wave films of the '60s.
Rififi, shot on the rainy streets of Paris, is imbued with the same gritty realism that marked Dassin's earlier work in New York (The Naked City) and London (Night and the City). Jean Servais plays Tony le Stéphanois, an aging crook whose thin lips and tired, seen-it-all eyes give him a look somewhere between Humphrey Bogart and Harry Dean Stanton. Out of jail after a five-year stretch, he joins up with a couple of pals to pull one last heist: a jewel robbery that is portrayed in such detail (including tips on how to silence an alarm using a fire extinguisher) that the film was banned in several countries.
The robbery sequence alone, which lasts for 30 minutes and is played entirely without dialogue, would be enough to ensure Rififi's classic status, but there's a lot more to enjoy, including terrific performances from Marie Sabouret as Tony's world-weary ex-girlfriend, and from Dassin himself as a dandified Italian safecracker with an eye for the ladies. After the thrill of the heist, in the film's final scenes when, with the inevitability of the best films noirs everything falls apart, Dassin achieves the lyricism that Truffaut admired so much. By combining the conventions of a caper movie with his own brand of bleak nihilism, he made Rififi into a film that deserves to be counted among the best ever made.--Simon Leake
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