Features: DVD, Aspect Ratio 1.33:1, Black & White
Editor's Note
With the dramatic crime thriller RIFIFI, blacklisted American director Jules Dassin returned to the cinema triumphantly. In addition to directing, Dassin co-wrote the script and appeared (under the name Perlo Vita) as Cesar the Italian safecracker. Cesar is one of the gang formed by the gaunt Tony (Jean Sevais), who has just returned to Paris from prison. The others are family man Jo (Carl Möhner) and the ebullient Mario (Robert Manuel). The four men plan a jewelry heist--and the almost 30-minute long robbery scene at the center of the film has become one of the cinema's classic sequences. They break into an upstairs apartment, tie up the couple who live there, and smash through the floor--carefully collecting the debris in an umbrella. Then, they lower themselves into the jewelry store, drill through the safe, and return the way they came. Dassin forgoes both music and dialogue as he shows the robbery in meticulous detail--and the sequence is riveting. The gang has barely completed the job, when unplanned incidents threaten, the police appear unexpectedly, a rival gang gets wind of the robbery, there is a kidnapping, and in the skullduggery that follows, only the honor of the gang survives.
Plot Summary
A banner film that broke through standards of accepted language, dialogue, gun violence, and crime on screen and stylized the film noir genre, Jules Dassin's 1954 film RIFIFI was an instant success. Based on the novel of the same title, DU RIFIFI CHEZ LES HOMMES by Auguste le Breton, the film's use of hard-boiled slang and the gangster garb of trench coats, top hats, and a cigarette dangling from one corner of the mouth went on to become the emblems of Humphrey Bogart-style noir classics.In RIFIFI, a hardened man, Tony le Stephanois (Jean Servais) is released from prison after five years to find that his woman has shacked up with another gangster, and the life he had planned to return to no longer exists. Down on his luck and without a dime in his pocket, he rounds up his old crime buddies--who drink and smoke all night assembled around the poker table--and agrees to commit one last crime: a jewel heist. For weeks the men plan, studying the alarm system and working out each detail of the break-in. When it actually comes time to perform the robbery, their actions are perfectly choreographed, their methods precise and successful, and they walk away untouched with millions of dollars of jewels. However, there's a hitch, and what was meant to be the perfect crime turns into a nasty gang war resulting in a blood bath on the glorious streets of 1950s Paris.
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