Rififi the Standard for Heist Films?

 

 

 Rififi (1955/2000)

Directed by Jules Dassin

Pathé, 122 minutes, not-rated

Black & white; in English, French, Italian with subtitles

★★★★ ½

 

 

Rififi is considered one of the greatest heist films ever made and has been heralded for other reasons as well. It was released in France in 1955, but its director Jules Dassin was an American blacklisted during the Red Scare for refusing to reveal his political views or those of his friends. The film is based on a novel by Auguste Le Breton, but was altered because Dassin felt Le Breton was racist—not to mention there was no way Dassin could depict the novel’s necrophilia. The novel depicted mobsters as Arabs and Berbers; Dassin’s heavy, Pierre Grutter (Marcel Lupovic), is instead vaguely Germanic. Even then Dassin had to make a few cuts to get the script past the censorious Catholic League of Decency, which worried the heist would inspire copycats. Several countries banned it for the same reason.

 

 “Rififi” means violent show of force and takes its name from a war in the 1920s between Berbers and Spain. Dassin ordered cinematographer Philippe Agostini to shoot only in overcast or foul weather because he wanted the film’s tones bathed in grey in order to show the seedy side of post-World War II Paris. Agostini followed orders brilliantly. Few film noirs use sharp angles, shadows, and contrast as well as Rififi. Paris appears as a mobbed-up city in which a few hustlers have wealth to throw around in nightclubs, but most citizens are living close to the margins. The latter includes Jo the Swede (Carl Mohner), a smalltime thief, who recently endured a five-year stretch in prison and finds his former girlfriend Mado (Magali Noel) is now the paramour of a bigtime crook, Grutter (Lupovic). Jo tries to win back Mado, but in a distressing scene beats her when she tells Jo he can’t keep her in a mink and luxury.

 

Jo contemplates a smash-and-grab at a jewelry store, as he has few prospects of moving out of his shabby apartment. He contacts aging underworld friend Tony (Jean Servais), who has a better idea: break into the jewelry store, bag really valuable jewels, and fence them through a London contact. They also enlist a master safecracker, Mario Farrati (Robert Manuel), an egotistical Italian with a lust for women. Their problem is that the store has state-of-the-art security.

 

That dilemma leads to the film’s most innovative half hour. After careful stakeouts, the crew assembles duplicate systems and figures out how to bypass them. The scheme shifts to an overnight job involving an assault of the store from above. There is a half hour of near-complete silence to detail the intricacies of the burglary. After watching it, you can understand why some feared Dassin had provided a how-to guide for a successful theft. Indeed, the plan was brilliant. Almost all the t’s are crossed and all the i’s are dotted.

 

Another controversial element in Rififi is Jo’s invocation of the criminals’ code of honor, a veritable imperative despite Jo’s reluctance to implement it. Criminality notwithstanding, Rififi was hailed for its “humanity.” It was a huge success and, in Dassin’s mind, a blow that helped erode McCarthyism and the blacklist. Ironically, it also inspired other directors to scour Le Breton’s backlist for story ideas.

 

Rififi was one of the great noir films. I will caution, though, that it is a period piece in the respect that you are likely to find the nightclub songs and its shadow screen dances rally naff. (You can tell it’s French in that nudity can be inferred in the female dancer!) I’m not sure what Dassin had in mind with these scenes beyond showing the decadence of those with money to burn. To speculate, he might have sought to imbue Rafifi with bit “hipness” at a time in which Beatnik culture was en vogue. If those scenes bug you, go ahead and fast forward them; you’ll not miss anything important.

 

To add a contemporary footnote, watching this Jules Dassin film is a warning that banning art hurts the censors and the audience they think they are protecting more than a creative mind willing to defy arbitrary power. It was eventually released in North America and the rest, as they say, is history. If you liked Oceans Eleven but don’t need to see “stars” or color on your screen, Rififi is a far better film. That's why it was re-released.

 

Rob Weir