Film Forum

Director Jules Dassin
Cast Jean Servais, Carl Möhner, Jules Dassin, Robert Manuel, Marie Sabouret
Screenplay Auguste Le Breton, René Wheeler, Jules Dassin
Cinematography Philippe Agostini
1955 | France | Approx. 118 min. | French with English subtitles

Du Rififi chez les hommes. (1955) Back from the pen, homme dur Jean Servais first belts around his ex-girlfriend Marie Sabouret, then rejoins copain Carl Möhner and cohort Robert Manuel, who’ve got a little jewel store smash-and-grab job lined up — but Servais wants the whole works. With the aid of freshly imported safecracker “César the Milanese” (director Dassin billed as “Perlo Vita”), the resulting classic heist — a legendary 30-minute sequence with no dialogue or music — provided a usable blueprint for real-life professionals (causing outright bans in some countries) — but then, another of Sabouret’s ex-boyfriends wants a big cut. A world-wide smash, Rififi raised eyebrows for its excessive gunplay, décolletage, and dope use — all of which led to its condemnation by the American Legion of Decency. Blacklisted Hollywood exile Dassin turned a potboiler by milieu specialist Auguste Le Breton into an existential thriller that earned him Cannes’ Best Director prize and set the standard for screen robberies for decades to come — from his own Topkapi to Mission: Impossible — while “Rififi” was subsequently stolen for titles of non-related thrillers. Philippe Agostini’s all-weather location shooting provides an invaluable time capsule of Paris in the 50s, with the late Magali Noël warbling the title song. 

A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE

Reviews

“THE BEST FILM NOIR I’VE EVER SEEN!”
– Francois Truffaut

“A NOIR MASTERPIECE!”
– Andrew Sarris

“JUST ABOUT FLAWLESS! For lovers of tough-guy moviemaking, Rififi really means perfection. A genre movie brought off so keenly that it defines that genre’s strengths and limits... As a director, Mr. Dassin has perfect pitch. When anything disrupts the film’s dry yet convivial tone — like Tony beating his ex-lover for taking up with that nightclub owner in his absence — it registers as a troubling portent, not a dramatic miscue. The movie has been criticized for its astringency: no spontaneous emotion, no tender or playful impulse, goes unpunished. But that’s what gives the film its hardscrabble integrity. Mr. Dassin seduces you into thinking that you’re joining four underworld musketeers. Then he shows you there’s no room in this band for carefree camaraderie.”
– Michael Sragow, The New York Times

“The underworld equivalent of a sublime French meal... As Rififi goes on, it becomes as savage as Reservoir Dogs, The Killing, or any of the other dozens of films over which it still casts a shadow.”
– Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

“THE BEST OF ALL HEIST MOVIES! Rififi mirrors the arcs of the criminal lives it examines: It seduces you in, and then won't let you out cleanly. THIS IS TOUGH-GUY NOIR OF THE HIGHEST PROOF.”
– Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice

“THE UNFORGETTABLE MASTERPIECE OF CRIME… Dassin’s meditative magnum opus.
A MUST-SEE.”
– Indiewire’s The Playlist