Rififi

Jules Dassin's Rififi, from 1955, is a pretty good heist film that suffers from structural deficiencies and directorial lapses. The twenty minute, largely silent jewel theft is justly famous and the final sequence, in which Jean Servais careens his car about Paris as life seeps out of him, is affecting. Servais, Dassin himself and, especially, Robert Manuel deliver finely etched performance as the thieves. The distaff side of the cast is less memorable. As in his American noirs, Dassin seems more interested in the brutality of his males. The backward tracking shot, foreshadowed in the film, of Dassin getting his coup de grace after betraying his comrades seems an apt response to the Hollywood rats who gave Dassin's name to HUAC and precipitated his exile.

However, Dassin's narrative drive seems to meander at times. The sequences tracing the thieves' downfall are belabored and stop the film in its tracks. The musical numbers are more leaden than playful, adding to the film's aura of impending doom, I suppose, but also halting its momentum. Dassin is not the subtlest of directors and this hampers some sequences. Particularly one in which Servais confronts an ex flame about her unfaithfulness while he was in the slammer. Servais' beating of the woman is savagely violent, but Dassin feels compelled to heighten an already over the top scene by zooming in on an old photo of the formerly romantic duo. Rififi is a fitfully fine film, but not as fine as its reputation.