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However much associated as a classic film noir, Jules Dassin’s adaptation of Auguste Le Breton’s pulp novel serves more accurately as the premiere caper film. John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950) was a telling precursor to “Rififi,” but Dassin’s unforgettable centerpiece safecracking sequence — devoid of any music or dialogue — gave birth to a new subgenre of movies, the heist film.
The Paris-set “Rififi” still serves as inspiration for just about every modern assemble-the-team caper movie you can name, “Reservoir Dogs” and “Oceans Eleven” included.
Its distributors abbreviated the film’s original slang-referencing title ”Du Rififi Chez les Hommes” (roughly translates as ‘some trouble between men’).
The shorter designation is stylishly delineated during a cabaret performance at a gangster-operated nightclub called L’Age d’Or; the Luis Buñuel film title reference comes from the film’s art director Alexandre Trauner who worked with the surrealist filmmaker on the 1930 masterpiece. The club’s resident chanteuse Viviane (Magali Noël) sings the title song “Rififi” as an ode to the “rough and tumble” underground lifestyle where “streetwise guys” in fedoras are just as likely to fire a “rod” as light up a smoke.
The underground joint provides a central meeting place for the aging Tony (played by the rugged Jean Servias), an ex-con recently released after a five-year stretch, to meet up with his fellow accomplices in preparation for the jewelry heist they are planning at Mappin & Webb, a real-life jewelry store on the Rue de Rivoli. The filmmakers put the audience in the middle of the action.
Jules Dassin’s seemingly French name — he was Russian Jewish — may have fooled some audiences into believing he was making films from his mother country, but this was not the case. Having been named as a Communist during a House on Un-American Activities hearing in 1948, the Connecticut-born Dassin hadn’t worked in film since being kicked off of directing “Night and the City” in 1950. At the time Dassin had nearly a dozen American movies under his belt, including such respected noir films as “Brute Force” and “The Naked City.” After stumbling around Europe for a couple of wayward years — he had been kicked out of Italy — film producer Henri Bérard gave Dassin the opportunity to adapt “Rififi.”
Jules Dassin’s status as an exiled victim of the Hollywood Blacklist informs the movie in a myriad of subtle ways. Honor among thieves is the thematic through line that underpins the action, and allows Dassin to comment judiciously on the toxic nature of America’s toxic social atmosphere.
“Rififi’s” criminal anti-heroes are made up of outliers who, like Dassin, are struggling to squeak out a living in a foreign land. The gang members have names with an attribution that separates him from the local Parisian culture. Jo le Suedois (or "the Swede") is the father of Tony’s godson, and the thief Tony went to jail to protect. Tony is referred to as “le Stéphanois,” an allusion to the Saint-Étienne region of eastern central France from which he hails.
Acting under the pseudonym Perlo Vita, Dassin himself plays Cesar le Milanais, the gang’s well-dressed safecracker whose secret theft of a diamond ring during the robbery inadvertently tips off a rival gang.
Tony has the pitiless task of imposing justice against Caesar for his imprudence. In the scene, Dassin plays a humble version of his fellow filmmakers who testified against him at the HUAC hearings. He embodies their frail humanity with a compassionate understanding of their transgression, and accepts the punishment that only his film’s protagonist can deliver.
