THE ABC OF CINEMA
Rififi 12
France | 1955 | 118 minutes
DIRECTED BY
Jules Dassin
STARRING
Jean Servais|Carl Möhner|Robert Manuel
In the ABC of Cinema, D is for Jules Dassin, US-born actor, writer, producer and director, who died in 2008, aged 96.
In the early 1950s, Dassin was blacklisted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and forced to give up a successful career in Hollywood. He had made a string of successful films during the 1940s, including The Naked City (1948). He went first to Britain, where he made Night and the City (1950), filmed on location in London. But he was banned from returning to Hollywood and moved to France. It was five years before he could kick-start his career with a low-budget crime film called Rififi.
Within a budget of only $200,000, he produced a heist movie par excellence, also reckoned to be one of the best examples of French film noir. And it won him the Best Director Award at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival.
The story involves rival criminal gangs in Paris. Tony, an ageing jewel thief, just out of prison, is persuaded to take on another jewel theft, which he enlarges into a much more ambitious, audacious and lucrative job. The theft itself is the centrepiece of the film, showing in detail how the thieves enter the premises and work as a team to evade the security system and break the safe. With no dialogue or music, this scene occupies a quarter of the running time and is probably the most famous heist sequence in film history. In fact, in several countries, the film was banned for fear of its being too explicit an instruction manual for would-be criminals!
The film’s budget prevented Dassin using a star cast, and he even stepped in to take one of the roles himself – the Italian safe-cracker César - whom he played under a pseudonym. He also wrote the screenplay and scouted the Parisian locations.
9 September 2024 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (25 or less) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
You've missed
this film!