Sustained for a stunning half-hour in almost total silence (no dialogue, no extradiegetic musical score), it is a self-contained, near-perfect gem of filmmaking at its finest, an engrossing visual ode to the power of men working together, even if the common cause here is a criminal one. There is nothing flashy about the sequence. Rather, it works because of the efficiency and precision of Dassin’s steady camera, which captivates us with the long hours of meticulous work involved—breaking through an apartment ceiling into the jewelry store below, disarming the burglar-alarm system, carefully drilling into the safe and then using an elaborate device that is much like a giant can opener to slowly saw through the metal and retrieve the millions of dollars worth of diamonds inside. Dassin makes the time fly by, although we are, at the same time, acutely aware of the enormous amount of time this heist requires, which shows in the tired, but fulfilled eyes and sweaty faces of the men once it is over. Copied numerous times but never quite equaled, this sequence will always remain in the pantheon of great movie moments.

Of course, if the heist sequence was all Rififi had to offer, it would not be the great movie that it is. There are too many movies out there that have one great sequence surrounded on either side by less-than-stellar material. What makes Rififi memorable beyond this one sequence is the drama and human truth that surrounds it on both sides. The first half of the movie develops the characters and their various plights, detailing the preparation for the heist and making clear the vast stakes that are involved. The second half of the movie following the heist as it turns from triumph to tragedy; human weakness starts the ball of destruction rolling, sending the main characters down an existential path of doom.

In this way, Rififi has a larger, grander sense of tragedy than many crime films of its type. When it comes to the film’s final sequence, a delirious car ride through Paris in a literal race against death that I would argue is just as brilliant as the heist sequence, we are so deeply involved with the characters that the melodramatic overture of the material achieves the harsh sting of reality.

The characters in Rififi are not the caricatures that often populate gangster films, but rather flawed people for whom we develop intense attachments. Played mostly by then-unknowns, the men and women of Rififi are ordinary criminals—not larger-than-life Bogart types or the charismatic psychopaths played by James Cagney, but rather recognizable human beings who happen to have chosen, for various reasons, a life of crime. Fundamentally decent at heart, they are still capable of shocking cruelty, although they don’t relish it as some do.

The central character is Tony le Stephanois, an aging ex-con just out of prison played with ragged dignity by Jean Servais, a once-well-known actor whose own career was on the rocks when the film was made. His protégé, Joe (Carl Möhner), is a family man who owes Tony for having gone to jail to protect him. The other two members of the gang are more conventionally movie-like: the rambunctious Italian Mario (Robert Manuel) and his friend, a fellow Italian expert safe cracker named Cesar (director Jules Dassin, acting under the pseudonym Perlo Vita). All four characters are vastly different, yet there is a recognizable and realistic rhythm to their interactions, which finds its fullest embodiment in the heist sequence, where we see each man doing his particular part in a silent symphony of workmanship. This scene would not have played nearly as well had Dassin not taken his time during the opening scene to establish the characters and their relationships.

This connection among the men and their recognizably human faults only adds to the tragic resonance of the narrative because we can’t shake off their fates so easily. We grow to feel for and even admire these persistent criminals who reach for one last bid for glory, only to be undermined by those who are more ruthless and less disciplined.

This is something Dassin must have identified with immensely. A rising director of hard-hitting film noir in the late 1940s (including 1947’s Brute Force and 1949’s The Naked City), he was named a communist and blacklisted during the HUAC hearings of the early 1950s, forcing him to flee to Europe, where his attempts to continue his filmmaking career were constantly undermined from abroad by pressure from the U.S. When he was offered the chance to direct Rififi, it was literally his last shot at maintaining a career, and he was richly rewarded with an international hit and a director’s award at the Cannes Film Festival. Rififi was eventually given a theatrical re-release in American art houses in the early 2000s, which is fitting tribute to a movie that was so influential, especially on the crime and gangster genres. That it was made by a gifted, but desperate man as his last bid for glory makes the connection between the artist and his art that much more complete.

Copyright ©2014 James Kendrick

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