Du rififi chez les hommes

Plot synopsis:
Tony "le Stéphanois" has served a five-year prison term for a jewel heist and is out on the street and down on his luck. His friend Jo approaches him about a smash-and-grab proposed by mutual friend Mario in which the threesome would cut the glass on a Parisian jeweler's front window in broad daylight and snatch some gems. Tony declines. He then learns that his old girlfriend, Mado, took up in his absence with gangster Parisian nightclub owner Pierre Grutter. Finding Mado working at Grutter's, Tony invites her back to his rundown flat. She is obviously well-kept, and Tony savagely beats her for being so deeply involved with Grutter. Tony changes his mind about the heist; he now accepts on the condition that they rob the jeweler's safe instead of the window. Mario suggests they employ the services of Italian compatriot César, a safecracker. The four devise and rehearse an ingenious plan to break into the store and disarm its sophisticated alarm system.
The caper begins with the group chiseling through a cement ceiling from an upstairs flat on a Sunday night. The suspenseful break-in completed, the criminals appear to escape without leaving any trace of their identities. However, without the others' knowledge, César pocketed a diamond ring as a bauble for his lover Viviane, a chanteuse at Grutter's club. The four men arrange to fence the loot with a London contact. Meanwhile, Grutter has seen Mado and her injuries, who breaks off their relationship. Infuriated at Tony's interference in his life, he gives heroin to his drug-addicted brother Rémy and tells him to murder Tony. Grutter sees the diamond César gave to Viviane and realizes that César, Mario, and Tony were responsible for the jewel theft. Grutter forces César to confess. Forsaking a 10 million franc police reward, Grutter decides to steal the jewels from Tony's gang, his brother Rémy brutally murdering Mario and his wife Ida when they refuse to reveal where the loot is hidden. Tony retrieves it from the couple's apartment and anonymously pays for a splendid funeral for them. He then goes looking for Grutter and stumbles onto the captive César, who confesses having squealed. Citing "the rules," Tony ruefully kills him.
Meanwhile, seeking to force their adversaries' hand, Grutter's thugs kidnap Jo's five-year-old son Tonio and hold him ransom. The London fence arrives with the payoff, after which Tony leaves to single-handedly rescue the child by force, advising Jo it is the only way they will see him alive. With Mado's help he tracks Tonio down at Grutter's country house and kills Grutter's brothers Rémy and Louis while rescuing him. On the way back to Paris, Tony learns Jo has cracked under the pressure and agreed to meet Grutter at his house with the money. When he arrives Grutter tells him Tony has already snatched the child and kills Jo. Seconds too late to save his friend, Tony is mortally wounded by Grutter before killing him as he tries to flee with the loot. Bleeding profusely, Tony drives maniacally back to Paris and delivers Tonio home safely before dying at the wheel as police and bystanders close in on him and a suitcase filled with 120 million francs in cash.

Tags: suspenseful, murder, bleak, violence, cult, atmospheric, romantic, revenge

Review:
But Rififi isn't just this one scene - every scene in the film is as masterfully put together, and as a whole, the film is not only taught with suspense, plot and character, but an adroitly told moral tale that set the scene for film noire for years to come.Cinematically and technically, the heist sequence may be the most impressive scene of the film, but for me, it's the final scene that holds the most power - Tony le Stéphanois's hallucinogenic drive towards redemption..
Juan Cesar makes things go wrong when he gives a valuable ring to his mistress."Du Rififi Chez les Hommes" is a magnificent film-noir, certainly among the best I have seen.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)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.
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.
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.
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.
I see alot of movies at the cinema (103 so far this year) and I have to say that this is by far and away the best film I have seen this year, even though it was released back in 1954!I sat in awe and watched this work of genius and felt quite ashamed that I had never even heard of it before my local art house cinema decided to show it for a week on what looked like a new print.
How they're gonna pull this off?Ironically, Dassin was blacklisted in Hollywood and went on to try his luck in France and made this little masterpiece, aptly called by some "The Grandddady of all caper- and heist movies".
This film is a work of pure class from start to finish, for a moment forget the famous 28 minute no dialog heist, forget that it's set in Paris and forget it's Noir.
Jean Servais, who later appeared in the entertaining horror sexploitation movie 'The Devil's Nightmare', is absolutely wonderful as Tony, a veteran criminal talked into joining his young friend Jo (Carl Mohner) in a daring robbery.
In some senses, it's like most other film noirs: you have tough guys ("rififi" meaning tough guy), capers, and things going bad.
The story is classic film noir: Bad guys pull off heist, get duped at the end.
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!?!?!?
Great moments, too, including the 35 minute sequence of the actual heist which had no dialogue and no music, but was still involving; Dassin's own "Forgive me" scene; and the car ride at the end of the movie.
It is essentially the first real heist movie, and still the best.The central character played by Jean Servais does a great job.
At a chic nightclub called "The Age Of Gold", we meet Viviane (Magali Noel), a tall, stylish singer with big lips whose stage show includes the song "Rififi", a word used to describe the danger of streetwise tough guys and their risky, outlaw pursuits; how appropriate.But Viviane's sexiness leads to a situation that causes problems for the four guys, and this plot turn occupies the final third of the film.
I know these four American films I mentioned are not caper movies per se, but rather detective stories with complicated story lines, which still exude a "noirean", gritty quality about them, similar to "Rififi".What is different here is the way Jules Dassin sets into motion the total ambiance of the film, not only in the gritty realism of the principals, but also in the usage of the streets of Paris as a subliminal character and co-conspirator unto itself!
Perhaps it IS a lot like the French director Melville's films in many ways--and I am sure Melville was influenced strongly by Dassin.I would say that "Rififi" is among the best Noir films ever--and probably the best Noir France has to offer--and that's saying a lot, as I often prefer the French Noir films--they are THAT good.
He did act in a few movies here and there in addition to directing--and his most famous acting role was probably in "Never on a Sunday" (in which he co-starred with his wife).If you liked this film, some other wonderful French crime films would include "Bob le Flambeur" (which, in many ways, is a re-tooling of "Rififi"), "Le Samourai", "Un Flic" and "Le Circle Rouge" (all by Jean-Pierre Melville), "Le Balance" (sort of an early 80s reinvention of Noir) and even "Diva" (yes, it's NOT Noir but has many Noir qualities).
A recent re-issue of the French crime film (original title 'Du Rififi Chez les Hommes'), with its famous 20-minute silent jewel heist sequence, now comes in the US in a gorgeous new print from The Criterion Collection with improved subtitles and some extras.
He's one of the most memorable characters, a dandified Italian safe cracker who speaks no French.Although this classic has all the trappings of French film noir--the black and white twilight world of well lit apartments, shiny black cars, men in suits, the nightclub scenes, including a dramatically filmed and lit title song performed at the club, the stony faces and the Gauloises in hand or mouth--I don't think it's as atmospheric or has quite as distinctive a style as Melville's films do.
Purists of tough-guy Hollywood genre work would eschew these and favor Dassin's early films, which include a prison drama, 'Brute Force' (1947);a cop flick, 'The Naked City' (1948); and two hard core noirs, 'Thieves' Highway' (1949), and 'Night and the City' (1950).
But to try to compare "Taming of the Shrew" with "Kiss Me Kate" is to do a disservice to both.With the single exception of how Dassin develops a somewhat rapid and questionable unraveling of the perpetrators' plan, this precursor of the director's later "Topkapi" combines a Hitchcockian cast with other film noir elements to hold the viewer's attention from beginning to end.
Rififi, directed by Jules Dassin, is in line with the Melville crime pictures (particularly Bob le Flameur and to a point Le Cercle Rouge) of being totally focused on story and character and making sure not a word is spoken that doesn't need, and was ahead of its time.
Dassin, like Melville years later, decided to create practically a silent film of a heist, sound effects included.
The few character scenes that do appear early on are intense and well done, but they only serve to make our protagonists sleazier and less sympathetic; am I supposed to root for a guy who beats his old girlfriend with a belt?I started to get on board with the robbery itself, a wonderful piece of almost silent film-making (no music, no dialog).
Very tense, and it's easy to see that directors have been ripping it off for generations, generally in much weaker movies such as "Mission: Impossible" and the godawful remake of "Ocean's Eleven."  But even then, I wasn't convinced that "Rififi" deserves its classic reputation.Thankfully, the film takes a twist about 2/3 of the way through, and the final act is rich in both characterization and suspense.
And the last scene gives an urgent new meaning to that standard car-ride catchphrase, "are we there yet?"  "Rififi" just gets better as it goes along, so make sure you stick with it - even if heist movies aren't your bag..
Enough has been said about the heist sequence already but it really is one of the tensest and most entertaining sequences in cinema and quite possibly the single greatest heist sequence ever filmed, not to mention the most plausible."Rififi" is far from a simple crime thriller, providing a thorough examination of human behavior and psychology which is worked into the main plot excellently in the screenplay written by Dassin, René Wheeler, and Auguste Le Breton (who also wrote the novel the film is based on).
Du rififi chez les hommes is a brilliant film which studies criminal minds and allows viewers to have a better understanding of criminals who are fundamentally not different from ordinary folks like us.What director Jules Dassin shows is that criminal do have families and they care a lot for them.That is why they adhere to a strict code of honor.
For them a family is not only made up of wives,mistresses and children but also include casual acquaintances and close friends.Contrary to what many might find it hard to believe,Jules Dassin has not tried to glorify crime in his film as rififi makes it clear that crime never pays.It shows that all kinds of bad activities result in some kind of human loss.Apart from its philosophical stance Rifif is worth watching for its technical finesse.While watching one of the film's most brilliant sequences about breaking of a safe,one would find it hard to believe meticulous precision with which criminal minds execute their plans.This is a scene which nobody has dared to copy in Hollywood..
The mood is just great, with its dark, well-composed photography and tough, spare dialogue and performances.2) That silent half-hour heist sequence is legendary for a reason, capturing minute details and tensions through a visual style that is easy to follow and absolutely gripping.3) The ending, which shows the final death in a manner that is dizzying, dogged and powerful.This remains a terrific movie..
Rififi is a classic heist film that is right up there with the best of its peers - The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing.
With Italian safe expert Cesar, they meticulously plan the burglary of a large jewelry establishment.This film is probably best known for two things: one, the half hour heist sequence that has absolutely no dialogue and no music, just the sounds of the men at work.
Former blacklisted US director Jules Dassin delivers a tense and unique film with terrific atmosphere, blending Film Noir with the French New Wave.One of the more unusual aspects of the film is that the actual heist is Act II, not Act III - which actually involves a kidnapping and a quest for vengeance.
He got the chance to direct a crime film and on a shoe string budget and managed to create a classic that still vibrates with a sense of urgency, seedy despair, unspoken rules of the underground and shocking violence.The plot is simple – le Stephanois is a tough, street smart and aging criminal who gets out of jail after taking a fall for his fellow thugs.
The infamous heist scene, shot in near silence with no dialog, is almost unbearable This really is the grand daddy of all heist movies with a central character who is as tough, haunted, and blasted by rififi as anyone to slouch through a crime film.
His three confederates give able backing while the female actresses also shine, with Tony's ex-girl and girlfriend candidly shown in states of undress five years before Hitchcock shocked America when filming Janet Leigh in her brassiere.Filmed in a brooding black and white, often in the Parisian rain, it literally drips atmosphere and features many memorable shots (the death of Cesar at Tony's hand, the kidnapped child's mother running to the camera in her anguish and more), while the centrepiece is of course the celebrated 30 minute dialogue-free scene of the robbery itself, where you forget you're watching actors and instead feel like you're witnessing closed circuit TV before its time.
But Dassin's decision had its merits - it helped the rebirth of the original French "invention" that once got exported to the US, went through several changes there, and now returned home through the hands of a cast out American: film noir.The screenplay Dassin wrote varies considerably from the source, first getting in depth into the authentic characters, then focusing especially on a beautifully choreographed, realistically played heist scene lasting nearly 30 minutes without any dialog or music, with the film's aftermath concluding in a spine-tingling denouement.
On the street, "rififi" means "likes it rough" or "plays rough." There is sure some playing rough in this brilliant Jules Dassin film, which went a long way toward taking him off the blacklist and breaking it all together."Rififi" concerns a 240-million franc jewel robbery in Paris, meticulously planned and carried out by Tony le Stephanois, Jo le Suedois, Mario Farrati, and Cesar le Milanais (Jean Servais, Carl Mohner, Robert Manuel, Jules Dassin), le Stephanois being the master criminal.
The suspense is riveting and leads to what happens after they almost get away with it.The post heist sequences are a film noir lesson in crime doesn't pay.
Dassin's direction keeps the tale moving forward with the emphasis on vivid B&W photography and a pace that quickens once the crime has been committed.Undoubtedly one of the best heist films you'll ever see, comparable to John Huston's THE ASPHALT JUNGLE in the manner in which it hold the viewer in its grip..
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.
But it is the only really worth thing within the movie.Some of the actors are good, especially Jean Servais (who had become a top star in the 30's but was in his low days at the time Rififi was being made) and the director, Jules Dassin, who plays César, the Italian specialist in safes.
Following his blacklist in Hollywood, Dassin went on to direct one of the all-time masterpieces.Without a doubt the best scene is the heist itself.
"Rififi" is often considered the landmark film that modernized heist movies, and it shines brilliantly as a suave, sexy crime noir (that happens to be French).
However, it's always beneficial to consider the origins of a film movement, and, though it may not be the first example, Jules Dassin's 'Rififi (1955)' would undoubtedly influence ever cinematic heist flick that followed it.
This 1955 heist film follows Tony le Stephanois, recently released from prison for theft, as he undertakes the robbery of his life.
Personally, I think that there were some really bad choices made in the casting of Rififi's six main characters.Set in Paris, France - This film's significance in movie-making history marks it as director, Jules Dassin's first foreign film following his blacklisting (and the ruin of his career) in Hollywood..
That's not to say this isn't a great noir film, cause it is (and directed by a commie, no less), just that without the aforementioned scenes, this movie would be a footnote in history at best.my Grade: B-.
There isn't a flabby moment or duff performance in the entire film and Dassin captures the milieu of seedy clubs and Parisian back streets like no-one else and the final drive through Paris by a dying man is one of the most iconic closing sequences of any movie.
While the 30 minute heist sequence is the most famous part of the movie(and rightfully so)the film actually gets better afterward.The director Jules Dassin knew what he was doing when he decided to not have any music during the heist scene or the final shootout, but instead inserted a great climactic score during Tony's final ride towards his destiny.
The action that Grutter subsequently takes (including the kidnapping of Jo's son) ultimately leads to none of the gang profiting from the success of the heist."Rififi" was the second film that Jules Dassin had made in Europe after having been blacklisted in Hollywood during the McCarthy era and interestingly his character betrays his fellow gang members just as he himself had been betrayed by others who gave evidence about him to the House Committee on Un-American Activities.Tony is man who looks drained, disillusioned and haggard and who doesn't even look forward to enjoying the rewards that he can reasonably expect to gain from the heist.
But someone had brought up good point that The Asphalt Jungle, which is finest film noir that center around heist sequence but nowhere that level similar to Rififi, had appear 5 years earlier.
An excellent example of Dassin's innovation is the heist sequence in Rififi, which is completely free of dialogue and music.
"Rififi"This gangster-heist film noir was a one-of-a-kind when it first came out , and still one of the best to do it today.
Regarded by many critics as the finest film noir ever made, the 1955 Rififi directed by Jules Dassin is available on a 7/10 Criterion DVD.