September 28–October 5, 2000
movie shorts
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Jules Dassin’s 1955 film noir was an obvious inspiration for the following year’s The Killing (and, by extension, Reservoir Dogs), with its B-movie gangsters given depth through careful pacing and an extended denouement which fully explores the consequences of their action. Dassin, an American expatriate who left the country after being named a Communist by Edward Dmytryk, structured the film around a true tour de force: a wordless (and nearly silent) jewel heist which occupies nearly half an hour. (Wonder where they got the idea for Mission: Impossible?) Though it’s shot in entirely realistic style, the sequence is fiendishly manipulative in its denial of gangster film clichés. (Dassin actually had the scene scored under protest, then prevailed to have the music removed.) And that goes for the rest of the film as well, where hardened thugs are repeatedly undercut by their own appetites. (That’s especially true for the lecherous safecracker, played by Dassin under a pseudonym.) One gangster’s wife tells him it’s not thugs who are the tough guys, but the ones who work honest jobs, a sentiment which effectively demolishes about every film noir that ever was. Rififi’s characters sometimes fall uncomfortably in between pulp stereotypes and more nuanced portrayals, and in the end, the film never quite escapes its own genre. But as far as that genre goes, you won’t find a more sophisticated picture.