Cast:
Jean Servais (Tony "le Stéphanois"), Carl Möhner (Jo "le Suédois"), Robert Manuel (Mario Ferrati), Jules Dassin (César "le Milanais"), Magali Noël (Viviane), Claude Sylvain (Ida), Marcel Lupovici (Pierre Grutter), Robert Hossein (Rémy Grutter), Pierre Grasset (Louis Grutter), Marie Sabouret (Mado), Dominique Maurin (Tonio), and Janine Darcey (Louis) Directed by Jules Dassin (#1043 - The Naked City)
Review:
'What I loved and really enjoyed was to see the film in public in Paris. All the nice bourgeois people who go to the movies were rooting for these guys to succeed. I had one of the gang hit a single piano key and the audience jumped. When I was writing it, I knew you had to have that rooting interest; the film would work only if I made people want them to succeed. First I introduced the element of friendship, because if you're going to care for the people who are going to be crooks, you have to have some sympathy for them as people. But part of it is also thinking that these guys are real professionals and work well together. It's like wanting a great star to come up to bat and hit a homer.''
It helps to refresh my memory of certain filmmakers. The son of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, Jules Dassin was raised in New York and became involved in acting from a youth with the Yiddish Art Theatre and studied abroad for years. He first became a director with radio plays in the late 1930s before moving to stage plays such as the Children's Theatre. It was around this time that he joined Communist Party USA. Later, he signed to become a studio director for RKO Radio Pictures that saw him work only as an assistant director before Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer eventually had him direct. He made his first film as a short with The Tell-Tale Heart (1941) before Nazi Agent (1942) became his feature debut. Dassin directed eight films for MGM in five years that he felt were fine. However, he soon directed a handful of films in freelance/20th Century Fox that he really felt was his growth, as highlighted by The Naked City (1948) and Night and the City (1950) Unfortunately, Dassin was blacklisted by the 1950s because of his name being connected with organizations connected to the "Communist-front" but at least never appeared before the "Un-American Activities Committee" like some of his peers. He was offered a job in France to direct movies and went with it, although there would be such difficulty in finding work that didn't involve American film distribution companies that his first film there was with Rififi (1955). Dassin directed twelve further movies that concluded with Circle of Two (1981); Dassin died in 2008 at the age of 96. The movie is, shall we say, based on the novel of the same name (okay it actually is known as "Du rififi chez les hommes" but I imagine it makes sense people know it by the shorter title, because the word means fight or bust-up) by Auguste Le Breton, once described as "the prince of argot". Apparently the slang used in the novel irked Dassin, and he once described the book as being "all about Arab bad behavior, including necrophilia", but the small chapter about a heist was interesting enough to whip up a script (incidentally, one praise of the film came from critic-turned-director François Truffaut that said Dassin made the best crime film out of the "worst crime novel I ever read"). The result is as such for writing: Dassin for the adaptation, René Wheeler and Le Breton for collaboration and Le Breton for dialogue. Apparently, the movie was only available on videotape for quite a few decades until a restoration in the 2000s.
It is an efficient movie, that's for sure. Dassin made a noir as grey as one could do, one that didn't need a big fistfight or music to convey a stone-cold thriller. Sure, it wasn't the first of its kind with elaborate heists, since the decade started with films such as The Asphalt Jungle (1950; Dassin contended he saw the movie only after making Rififi). You see the streets in winter and see a natural atmosphere of doubt within listless souls. It works pretty well in swift ice-cold entertainment (115 minutes) and it does so with a litany of actors that aren't necessarily big names (well, at least Servais appeared in multiple Dassin movies) but still manage to make the movie roll along with relatively few troubles. It helps the heist sequence was based on an actual burglary in Marseille in 1899, where a hole in the floor was cut of a travel agency's office in order to dig onto a jewel shop while catching the debris with an umbrella to make off with valuables. You just have to see it to believe that a director can make a heist sequence (in the midst of the film, not at the end) seem so fascinating with no need for music or dialogue to make it clear of efficient professionalism*, at least with what you get from these folks. Servais is probably the most dependable of the presences in the film, which is comprised of wayward people trying to make a living that can only find jagged edges with the tiniest bit of hope there even among the rugged flaws that come out in prideful figures in a movie like this; it helps to pay attention to a movie that has fate as the villain lurking behind the thugs, if you think about it. It does make it a bit distinct to have the climax involve a litany of crosses and quick decisions without need for just having authority clamping down even when you know that some crimes don't pay and it has the swiftness to close right down the road as if it would make a worthwhile companion to The Wages of Fear (1953) in sudden fates, if you will. As a whole, this is a pretty neat noir, building its tension and shrouded curiosity to meaningful execution that will prove a worthwhile time down the line for classic world cinema.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
*Incidentally, Dassin's other caper with Topkapi (1964) had a heist sequence that apparently proved some inspiration for the 1966 TV series Mission: Impossible, and the 1996 Mission: Impossible movie in turn featured a scene inspired by Topkapi.
Next in August: a new theme, of sorts...
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