Rififi - Criterion Collection
by Jules Dassin
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alice Garan, Jacques Besnard, Jacques David, Janine Darcey, Pierre GrassetDirector: Jules Dassin
DVD: 2 Layers, Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: Pan & Scan, 1.33:1
Running Time: 118 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-04-24
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Rififi - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: A Rumble Among the Boys
Summary: 4 Stars
This 1955 film was a sensation because of its unsentimental realism that differed from films of the 1940s. It begins with a gambling game. Tony from St?phane is short of funds, and asks for help. They drive a 1940s Ford in Paris. Another man shows up with a plan to burglarize a jewelry store. But Tony is too old and slow to run fast. Tony visits a nightclub to find Mado, an old girl friend. The conversation reveals their character and relationship. Then Tony decides he needs to earn money and make a big score. A long distance telephone call takes scheduling. Mario drives a Buick. Conspicuous consumption? After meeting at the nightclub they contact a fence in London.
They take great care by studying the jewelry store for their big job. They create a key for a door. Cesar knows how to case the joint and they study the alarm. It's the latest technology, designed to go off if a wire is cut or there is any vibration. Tony gets an idea about using a fire extinguisher! A simple idea defeats high technology. The next night the job is on. Tony steals a car. Note how the French store has a concierge on the premises. The thieves go about breaking in through the ceiling. They open an umbrella indoors. Tony descends to silence the alarm. The safe is carefully tipped over to drill into the back and cut a hole to reach inside. Cesar takes a souvenir. Two gendarmes find the stolen car and call it in. There's always the unexpected. But their getaway succeeds and plan to fence the jewels in London (a comment on the financial center of the world).
Cesar disobeys his orders and hooks up with that nightclub singer. He gives her a clue. Pierre discovers this and decides to take over. Ida and Mario are captured and forced to talk, but they don't betray Tony. Now Tony is out for revenge on the Grutters. He finds Cesar and reminds him of the rules of the game. The Police Inspector watches over the funeral procession. The Grutters take steps to obtain the stolen loot. Tony will hunt the Grutters by contacting his fellow crooks. Someone tells Tony where they are. The tension builds. Then a messenger is sent to Remy and Tony follows him for a final showdown. I won't give away the ending on this old film, but justice is served, the guilty are punished.
Do parts of this film remind you of "The Asphalt Jungle"? Note how costs are kept down with a small cast and limited scenes. The long silence during the burglary reduces the costs of dubbing in another language. Tony was the first man into the store, but not the last man out. This resulted in the fatal flaw. But there could have been a squabble over the loot. There's more to go around when there are fewer shares. Or a gangster could have figured out that Tony was a jewel thief. In real life the Paris police would have rounded up all known jewel thieves and questioned them on their alibi. Why did the London fence carry a small fortune without guards? The biggest flaw in this film is the indoor alarm; they are placed outdoors and high off the ground. The presence of an innocent child adds irony to this story.
Summary of Rififi - Criterion Collection
Hollywood's loss was Europe's gain when Jules Dassin fled America because of the House Un-American Activities Committee blacklist at the end of the 1940s. His films helped bring the moral ambiguity of the postwar American thriller to Europe, inspiring a new generation of critics and filmmakers. Writing several years before he made The 400 Blows, Fran?ois Truffaut praised Dassin for the way his films "combin[ed] the documentary approach with lyricism," a method that would inform many of the new wave films of the '60s.Rififi, shot on the rainy streets of Paris, is imbued with the same gritty realism that marked Dassin's earlier work in New York (The Naked City) and London (Night and the City). Jean Servais plays Tony le St?phanois, an aging crook whose thin lips and tired, seen-it-all eyes give him a look somewhere between Humphrey Bogart and Harry Dean Stanton. Out of jail after a five-year stretch, he joins up with a couple of pals to pull one last heist: a jewel robbery that is portrayed in such detail (including tips on how to silence an alarm using a fire extinguisher) that the film was banned in several countries.
The robbery sequence alone, which lasts for 30 minutes and is played entirely without dialogue, would be enough to ensure Rififi's classic status, but there's a lot more to enjoy, including terrific performances from Marie Sabouret as Tony's world-weary ex-girlfriend, and from Dassin himself as a dandified Italian safecracker with an eye for the ladies. After the thrill of the heist, in the film's final scenes when, with the inevitability of the best films noirs everything falls apart, Dassin achieves the lyricism that Truffaut admired so much. By combining the conventions of a caper movie with his own brand of bleak nihilism, he made Rififi into a film that deserves to be counted among the best ever made.--Simon Leake
After making such American noir classics as The Naked City and Brute Force, blacklisted director Jules Dassin went to Paris and embarked on his masterpiece: a twisting, turning tale of four ex-cons who hatch one last glorious heist in the City of Lights. At once naturalistic and expressionistic, this melange of suspense, brutality, and dark humor was an international hit and earned Dassin the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Criterion is proud to present Rififi in a pristine digital transfer.
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