Rififi

Tony "le Stéphanois", a criminal who has served a five-year prison term for a jewel heist, is out on the street and down on his luck. His friend Jo approaches him about a smash-and-grab proposed by mutual friend Mario in which the trio would cut the glass on a Parisian jeweler's front window in broad daylight and snatch some gems. Tony declines. He then learns that his old girlfriend, Mado, took up in his absence with gangster Parisian nightclub owner Pierre Grutter. Finding Mado working at Grutter's, Tony invites her back to his rundown flat. She is obviously well-kept, and Tony savagely beats her for being so deeply involved with Grutter. Tony changes his mind about the heist; he now accepts on the condition that rather than merely robbing the window, they will take on the more difficult but more lucrative task of robbing the store's safe. Mario suggests they employ the services of Italian compatriot César, a safecracker. The four devise and rehearse an ingenious plan to break into the store and disable its sophisticated alarm system. The caper begins with the group chiseling through a cement ceiling from an upstairs flat on a Sunday night. The suspenseful break-in is completed, and the criminals appear to escape without leaving any trace of their identities. However, without the others' knowledge, César pocketed a diamond ring as a bauble for his lover Viviane, a chanteuse at Grutter's club. The heist makes headline news, and the four men arrange to fence the loot with a London contact. Meanwhile, Grutter has seen Mado and her injuries, and she breaks off their relationship. Infuriated at Tony's interference in his life, Grutter gives heroin to his drug-addicted brother Rémy and tells him to murder Tony. But then, the other Grutter brother, Louis, shows them the diamond César gave to Viviane and they realize that César, Mario, and Tony were responsible for the jewel theft. Grutter forces César to confess. Forsaking a FF10 million police reward, Grutter decides to steal the jewels from Tony's gang, with Rémy brutally murdering Mario and his wife Ida when they refuse to reveal where the loot is hidden. Tony retrieves it from the couple's apartment and anonymously pays for a splendid funeral for them. He then goes looking for Grutter and stumbles onto the captive César, who confesses to having squealed. Citing "the rules", Tony ruefully kills him. Meanwhile, seeking to force their adversaries' hand, Grutter's thugs kidnap Jo's five-year-old son Tonio and hold him for ransom. The London fence arrives with the payoff, after which Tony leaves to single-handedly rescue the child by force, advising Jo it is the only way they will see him alive. With Mado's help, he tracks Tonio down at Grutter's country house and kills Rémy and Louis while rescuing him. On the way back to Paris, Tony learns Jo has cracked under the pressure and agreed to meet Grutter at his house with the money. When Jo arrives Grutter tells him Tony has already snatched the child and kills him. Seconds too late to save his friend, Tony is mortally wounded by Grutter but kills him as Grutter tries to flee with the loot. Bleeding profusely, Tony drives maniacally back to Paris and delivers Tonio home safely before dying at the wheel as police and bystanders close in on him and a suitcase filled with FF120 million in cash. Jo's wife, Louise, takes her child from the car and leaves the suitcase and the body to the police. ==Cast==

• Jean Servais as Tony "le Stéphanois": A gangster who recently returned from serving five years in prison for jewel theft. The eldest member in on the heist, Tony is godfather of namesake Tonio, son of Jo "le Suédois". • Carl Möhner as Jo "le Suédois": A young Swedish gangster for whom Tony took the five-year rap. Jo invites Tony in on the heist. "Le Suédois" translates to "the Swede" in French. • Robert Manuel as Mario Ferrati: A happy-go-lucky Italian gangster who came up with the original idea for a jewel heist. • Jules Dassin as César "le Milanais": An expert safecracker hired by Tony with a weakness for women. Dassin played the role under the pseudonym of Perlo Vita. • Magali Noël as Viviane: a night-club singer who gets involved with César "le Milanais"; she sings the film's title song. • Claude Sylvain as Ida: Mario Ferrati's wife • Marcel Lupovici as Pierre Grutter: Leader of the Grutter gang and owner of the night-club L'Âge d'Or. • Robert Hossein as Rémy Grutter: A member of the Grutter gang, addicted to heroin. • Pierre Grasset as Louis Grutter: A member of the Grutter gang. • Marie Sabouret as Mado: The former lover of Tony "le Stéphanois" and the current lover of Pierre Grutter. • Dominique Maurin as Tonio, the young son of Jo "le Suédois". • Janine Darcey as Louise, Jo's wife and the mother of Tonio. ==Production==

Development The film Rififi was originally to be directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, a later luminary of the heist film genre. Melville gave his blessing to American director Jules Dassin when the latter asked for his permission to take the helm. He had been blacklisted in Hollywood after fellow director Edward Dmytryk named him as a Communist to the House Committee on Un-American Activities in April 1951. Dassin attempted a film ''L'Ennemi public numero un'', which was halted after stars Fernandel and Zsa Zsa Gabor withdrew under American pressure. Due to the low budget, the locations were scouted by Dassin himself. and there were to be no fistfights in the film. Such fight scenes had been important to the popular success in France of the Lemmy Caution film series. The scene where Tony regretfully chooses to kill César for his betrayal of the thieves' code of silence was filmed as an allusion to how Dassin and others felt after finding their contemporaries willing to name names in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. This act was not in the original novel. Music and title Georges Auric was hired as the composer for the film. Dassin and Auric originally could not agree about scoring the half-hour caper scene. After Dassin told Auric he did not want music, Auric claimed he would "protect [him]. I'm going to write the music for the scene anyways, because you need to be protected". After filming was finished, Dassin showed the film to Auric once with music and once without. Afterward, Auric agreed the scene should be unscored. In 2001, Dassin admitted that he somewhat regretted the Rififi theme song, used only to explain the film's title which is never mentioned by any other film characters. The title (World War I French military slang) is almost un-translatable into English; the closest attempts have been "rough and tumble" and "pitched battle".{{cite news ==Release==

Rififi debuted in France on 13 April 1955. The film was banned in some countries due to its heist scene, referred to by the Los Angeles Times reviewer as a "master class in breaking and entering as well as filmmaking". Rififi was banned in Finland in 1955 and released in severely cut form in 1959 with an additional tax because of its content. In answer to critics who saw the film as an educational process that taught people how to commit burglary, Dassin claimed the film showed how difficult it was to actually carry out a crime. These films include Du rififi chez les femmes (1959), Du rififi à Tokyo (1963), and Du rififi à Paname (1966). On its United Kingdom release, Rififi was paired with the British science fiction film The Quatermass Xperiment as a double bill; this went on to be the most successful double-bill release in UK cinemas in all of 1955. The Criterion Collection released a DVD version of the film on 24 April 2001. In the United Kingdom, Rififi was released on DVD by Arrow Films on 21 April 2003, and on Region B Blu-ray by the same publisher on 9 May 2011. The film was released to Blu-Ray and re-released to DVD in Region 1 by Criterion on 14 January 2014. ==Critical reception==

Upon its original release, film critic and future director François Truffaut praised the film, stating that "Out of the worst crime novel I ever read, Jules Dassin has made the best crime film I've ever seen" and "Everything in Le Rififi is intelligent: screenplay, dialogue, sets, music, choice of actors. Jean Servais, Robert Manuel, and Jules Dassin are perfect." French critic André Bazin said that Rififi brought the genre a "sincerity and humanity that break with the conventions of a crime film, and manage to touch our hearts". In the February 1956 issue of the French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma, the film was listed as number thirteen in the top twenty films of 1955. The film was well received by British critics who noted the film's violence on its initial release. The Daily Mirror referred to the film as "brilliant and brutal" while the Daily Herald made note that Rififi would "make American attempts at screen brutality look like a tea party in cathedral city". The National Board of Review nominated the film as the Best Foreign Film in 1956. Rififi was re-released for a limited run within America on 21 July 2000 in a new 35 mm print containing new, more explicit subtitles that were enhanced in collaboration with Dassin. The film was received very well by American critics on its re-release. The film ranking website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 93% of critics had given the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 41. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 97, based on 13 reviews. Among negative reviews of the film, Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader felt that "the film turns moralistic and sour in the last half, when the thieves fall out." The critic and director Jean-Luc Godard regarded the film negatively in comparison to other French crime films of the era, noting in 1986 that "today it can't hold a candle to Touchez pas au grisbi which paved the way for it, let alone Bob le flambeur which it paved the way for." ==See also==