Sunday, April 19, 2015

Family Movie Night: Rififi

Title: Rififi
Director: Jules Dassin
Original Release: 1955
Choice: My Wife's
My Overall Rating: 3 stars out of 5
via Wikipedia
Rififi was American director Jules Dassin's first film in five years after being blacklisted in Hollywood.  Based on Auguste Le Breton's novel Du rififi chez les hommes, the movie tells the story of a beautifully executed jewelry heist that unravels disastrously afterwards.  The robbery itself has inspired several copycat crimes in the real world since.



Parts of the story are riveting: the heist, of course, and also the final act involving the abduction of a child.  The character development that fills the rest of the time is less compelling.  The men are all rotten.  The women are all blameless and treated horribly.  Black-and-white footage of 1950s Paris is quite satisfying.

14 comments:

  1. The men are beyond rotten. The heist seems to get lost in the horrid men and helpless women. Oh, things would be different today.

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    1. I don't know if it would be so different. Men abusing women has hardly disappeared from pop culture.

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  2. It does not sound like something I'd enjoy even with my liking of heist movies.

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  3. This sounds like it would be a great film if the men would not be as rotten and the women stood up to the men. I have not seen this one but have heard of it. One thing-the Europeans were definitely ahead of the times re: censorship crap than the American film industry

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    1. I hadn't thought of it from that angle. The same movie made in the US at the time would have been quite different.

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  4. "The men are all rotten."

    If you're gonna be a criminal, at least be a criminal. Sounds great, even if the theme is not jovial.

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  5. I wonder if it was well received in its day. I'm not a big fan of heist movies but they must be popular since so many are made.

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    1. The film was banned in a lot of countries due to the near clinical robbery. Otherwise, it was commercially successful, spawning many sequels and imitations.

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  6. What a cool movie and a child abduction would be a horrible twist. Another classic I haven't seen... Yet

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  7. I'd like to see this despite the faults. This looks like it has remake potential with better character development.

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    Replies
    1. There was talk of a remake a few years back with Al Pacino in the lead.

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