Rififi

You're back outside, after a little time confined, your close friends make you an offer you decline, but after a little contemplation, your respond with affirmation, and counter with a scheme that's more refined. The team is gathered, and the plans are put in place, no stone unturned, and nothing is misplaced, the execution is sublime, pulling off the perfect crime, just keep your heads down, you haven't left a trace. Alas distractions bring your work to the attention, of other villains, putting gains under contention, best endeavours have been flawed, a cascade of cheat and fraud, on this occasion, without salvation, and no redemption.

Great story, great performances, perfectly executed (almost).

I heard they were going to remake this French classic in 2007, and I see it is in development for 2011. This will be a shame, as Hollywood kicked writer/director Jules Dassin out because of the infamous blacklist. They should not have the right to remake any of his films.

I love "caper" films and "film noir," and this combines the best of both.

Tony (Jean Servais) gets out after doing a nickle, and after he beats up his old girlfriend (Marie Sabouret), he plans a big score with his friends Mario (Robert Manuel) and Jo (Carl Möhner), What makes this a great caper flick is the attention to detail in planning the robbery. You see that reflected in the George Clooney Vegas capers. Nothing is left to chance.

The caper goes off great but Grutter (Marcel Lupovici) sends his sons, Robert Hossein and Pierre Grasset after Tony and the gang. After blowing it with Mario, they kidnap Jo's son. Lots of bullets fly before it is over.

A great film by a great director. The standard by which other caper films are measured.

Tony le Stéphanois gets out early after 5 years in prison. He has a plan to rob the jewelry store Mappin & Webb with his friends Jo and the Italian Mario Ferrati. He finds his old girlfriend Mado who abandoned him for the gangster Louis Grutter. He viciously beats her. For the job, he wants to hit the safe and gets Cesar the Milanese. The heist goes off perfectly but that's not the end of it.

It's a French heist film with more realism. It is well done with good intense acting. The most interesting thing is how modern the movie is. The formula is well set now, but it was probably more groundbreaking back then. These are the modern anti-hero protagonists.

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Or vice-versa.

This is a French film noir directed by an American film maker (Jules Dassin) who had to leave the country because of being blacklisted by Hollywood thanks to HUAC. The premise of the story is rather familiar--one last jewel heist for Tony le Stephanois and his buds--and so is the ending with everybody getting... Well, no spoilers here, for sure, since this is the sort of film in which tension toward the ending is important.

Dassin filmed in realistic lighting in black and white on the streets of Paris using actors and actresses who are not glamorous. The engaging--sometimes intruding--score by Georges Auric nicely enhances the movie and will remind viewers of many a similar score from American film noirs from the forties and early fifties. Jean Servais plays the hardcore, consumptive lead in a fedora much as Humphrey Bogart might have played him. Tony's recently out of prison, past his prime, but still tough and decisive when he has to be, his mind still sharp when focused, the kind of anti-hero whose eyes water even though the tears will never fall.

Dassin plays the Italian safecracker and would-be ladies man who knows the rules but gets careless.

In film noir we are forced by the logic and focus of the film to identify with the bad guys. Often there are levels of bad guys, the "good" bad guys we are identifying with and the "bad" bad guys who are out to do in our good bad guys, and then maybe there's a really bad, bad bad guy or two. (Here we have Remi Grutter, played by Robert Hossein, a slightly sadistic druggie.) Then there are the cops who are irrelevant or nearly so. In more modern film noir the bad guys are not even "good" bad guys, and they get away with it or something close to that. In the old film noir, which evolved from the gangster films of the thirties, the usual motto, following the old Hollywood "code," was "Crime Doesn't Pay," with every criminal having to pay for his or her crime before the end of the movie.

Probably the most impressive feature of Rififi is how nicely the film moves along. The plot unfolds quickly and seamlessly much the way the great film directors always did it, directors like Stanley Kubrick, Louis Malle, and the best of Hitchcock. Some have actually compared this to Kubrick's The Killing (1956) and suggest that Kubrick stole a little. Well, directors always steal if need be, and there are some perhaps telling similarities, such as it being "one last heist" for the protagonist, and having the girl gum up the works. The similarities may go deeper because as this film was nearing its end I suddenly thought, oh, no! the suitcase in the back seat is going to fly out of the convertible, hit the ground, burst open, and all the money is going to fly into the air! Those of you who have seen The Killing may recall what happened to the money near the end of the film! Which reminds me of another film with something bad happening to the money: Oliver Stone's U Turn (1997) starring Sean Penn. There the money in his backpack gets blown to smithereens by a shotgun blast. Ha, ha, ha! Getting the dubbed version of this film would be an act of sacrilege since the dialogue (when there is some: the heist itself is done entirely without dialogue, about 30 minutes worth) is terse and easy to follow requiring only an occasional glance at the subtitles, which, by the way, are quite utilitarian and guiding as opposed to having every word spelled out.

One other thing: all the brutality is done as sex used to be done in film, that is off camera. A guy gets his throat slit. We don't see it. I kind of like this approach. We don't have to see the gore. You could almost let your kids see Rififi--almost.

Catch this one now and be on the lookout for a Hollywood reprise starring Al Pacino and directed by Harold Becker coming out next year in which you can be sure that the violent scenes will be played out in full.

RIFIFI

This was a fantastic film by Jules Dassin. Great characters, heist, villains and photography. This was the complete opposite of Kubrick's The Killing. With very little expository dialogue in the script, so much of the movie was told through actions and glances and was left up to the viewer to decipher, whereas The Killing had a narrator helping the audience feel stupid. What I really liked was the main character---he was such a bad-ass that he had a `The' before his name...Le Stephanois.

The passage of time has been very good to Rififi and I think today's audiences will be surprised at how many of today's directors have borrowed form Rififi. Paul Thomas Anderson's HARD EIGHT comes to mind, as the character Sydney is very similar to Le Stephanois. Also recently, Steven Soderbergh's THE LIMEY comes to mind as being influenced by the characters in Dassin's masterpiece. The story is classic film noir: Bad guys pull off heist, get duped at the end. I think today's audiences will like the story. The only thing that doesn't quite hold up is the scene with the woman singing Rififi in the nightclub. It's quaint to watch, but there aren't many(if any) clubs left like this today. Other than that, it holds up excellently.

It was easy to root for Le Stephanois because he was such a decisive man of action. He knew what to do, how to do it, and you know he would get it done. The villain was cast perfectly. He and his junkie brother were wholly contemptible and you REALLY didn't want him to get the money from such an exhilarating heist.

The scene in the film with Le Stephanois trying desperately to make it to Joe's home is brilliantly juxtapaosed with the boy gleefully riding in the covertible as if it was a carnival ride. It was truly a creepy film moment and one of the only times where there was no sound effects and just soundtrack music playing.

Wow, this is the coolest film noir ever. The infamous hush-hush(20 min.) heist scene, and the fact that a blacklisted American makes the ULTIMATE film noir while in Paris, FRANCE...if you haven't seen it...what the HECK are you waitin' for!?!?!? HURRY!!! HIGHEST RECOMMENDATIONS!