Anniversary of Rififi
On April 13, 1955, in France, Jules Dassin’s film "Du rififi chez les hommes (Rififi)" was released on cinema screens.
A few words about this director. Julius Moses Dassin (this is his real name) was born into a Jewish family in the United States in 1911. Julius' father, Shmul Dassin, emigrated to the USA from Odessa (Russian Empire, now Ukraine), where he worked as a hairdresser, Julius's mother, Berta Vogel, was a housewife before moving to America. Already at the age of 14, Julius Dassin began to play on the stage of the Jewish proletarian theater ARTEF, whose leader Benno Schneider was a graduate of the Habima theater studio. This studio, created "under the wing" of the Moscow Art Theater, by order of K.S. Stanislavsky was headed by Evgeny Vakhtangov. From 1934-1936 Julius Dassin studied drama techiques in Europe.
Upon returning from Europe, Julius Dassin began an active theatrical activity: he worked as an actor in the Children's Theater and the ARTEF Theater, wrote plays and scripts, and directed radio shows. At the same time, Dassin joined the US Communist Party, from which he left after he learned about the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In 1940, Julius Dassin received an invitation from the MGM film company and in 1941 made his first short film based on Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart". In 1942, Julius Dassin released three full-length feature films: "Nazi Agent", "The Affairs of Martha", "Reunion in France".
Fruitful cinematographic activity Julius Dassin combined with active social activities. Firstly, he was an executive board member of the Actors' Laboratory Theatre. Secondly, he had been a member of the Artists' Front to Win the War gathering on October 16, 1942. Thirdly, he was a sponsor of the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions' Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace, held from March 25–27, 1949. The pronounced anti-Nazi nature of all three of these organizations led them to be classified as subversive by the Committee on Un-American Activities. The situation was further complicated by the fact that Dassin’s colleague in the cinematography department, director Eduard Dmytryk, a Ukrainian by birth, a member of the US Communist Party, being persecuted for belonging to the Communist Party and wanting to “buy” forgiveness and the opportunity to continue professional activities, denounced Dassin and 25 others figures of American cinema. The result was the prosecution of Dassin. As a result, from the beginning of the 50s, Julius Dassin was excommunicated from professional activities and deprived of his livelihood. As a result, in 1953 he and his family (including 15-year-old Joe, a future singer) were forced to emigrate to France.
The film "Du rififi chez les hommes (Rififi)" was the first film of Jules Dassin after his forced emigration from the United States. In France, Jules Dassin tried several times to take up his professional craft - filmmaking, but each time the authorities of the country, which declared itself without any reason to be a "bulwark of democracy", thwarted these attempts across the ocean. Thus, by explicitly implementing the anti-democratic ban on the profession, moreover, on the territory of another state. (Read more about these transoceanic persecutions here.)
The great French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville helped Dassin. It was he who was supposed to direct this film. But he offered his place in the director's chair Jules Dassin. Thus expressing the general attitude of French filmmakers towards the dictates of the overseas "guardians of democracy." Naturally, the will and desire of Melville alone would not be enough. The benevolent attitude of the film company Pathé Consortium Cinéma was required. And it was available. Evidence of this is that Dassin was allowed to thoroughly rework the script for the future film.
The script of the picture was originally based on the novel of the same name by Auguste Le Breton (real name - Montfort). Auguste Montfort was known in pre-war France as a thief and a card cheater. During the WWII, he joined the Resistance, in the ranks of which he proved himself a real hero, for which he was awarded state decorations of post-war France. Evil tongues claimed that Le Breton (“Breton” - “nickname” of Auguste Montfort in criminal circles) took to the Resistance only because the Nazi regime made it impossible for people of his “profession” to exist. But be that as it may, after the war, Auguste Le Breton, crowned with state awards, took up writing work, creating literary works on the basis of the acquired criminal experience. And this experience was more than enough. Accordingly, the works of Le Breton more than naturalistic depicted the life of criminals and their crimes.
Jules Dassin, rewriting the script, tried, as far as possible, to smooth out the naturalness of the literary source. This is the first. And secondly, he almost completely removed the racial-ethnic background from the script, since the main theme in Le Breton’s novel was the confrontation between Arab-African and European gangs.
A very modest budget was allocated for the production of the film - 200 thousand dollars (equivalent to the current 1.9 million dollars). In this regard, Dassin was forced to invite the most "unpretentious" actors to shoot. So, the main role is played by actor Jean Servais, who by the time the filming began had not had serious roles for several years because of his alcoholism. Jules Dassin was forced to play one of the roles himself, but not out of excessive vanity, as is often the case, but solely out of the need to save on fees. But be that as it may, the film was created and this film was watched by 3.28 million French moviegoers only in the first year of the demonstration, and Francois Truffaut called it the best film of the noir genre of all that he had ever seen.
Two weeks after the premiere, the film was presented to guests and participants of the Cannes International Film Festival. The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or - the main prize of this festival. But the jury, chaired by Marcel Pagnol, awarded this prize to American film by Delbert Mann "Marty". The company of relative “losers” to Jules Dassin’s film was composed of 32 other top award-winning films, including Kenji Mizoguchi's "Chikamatsu monogatari (A Story from Chikamatsu)", "East of Eden" by Elia Kazan, "L'oro di Napoli (The Gold of Naples)" by Vittorio De Sica.
But unlike the great Masters of cinema listed, Jules Dassin did not remain without an award for this festival: he was awarded the prize for best directing (together with the Soviet film director Sergey Vasilev, who directed the Soviet-Bulgarian film "Герои Шипки Geroite na Shipka (Heroes of Shipka)".
The film was widely enough presented in Western Europe. In the cinemas of the USSR, of course, the film was not shown. And in the United States, a dilemma has arisen: to release the film of director included in the “black list” during the so-called “witch hunt” on the screens, or not to allow it. And initially the film was banned. Moreover, the reason for the refusal was declared an excessive amount of violence in the film. Well, the "bastion of democracy" could not admit that the film is prohibited on ideological reasons. However, the commercial potential of the picture was, as they say, obvious. And in the end, commercial considerations prevailed over ideological ones: the ban on the film was lifted, and the film was released to the U.S. cinemas on June 5, 1956. Moreover, the director of the film, Jules Dassin, was struck off the blacklist. True, in order to compromise, and in order not to "tease the geese," in the credits in the list of busy actors, Dassin’s name was replaced by Perlo Vita. But, most importantly, saved as the name of the director and co-author of the script. This is more important. A film in North America has raised more than 520 thousand dollars. That is, only in America it paid off twice.
Nowadays, in the twenty-first century, the film "Du rififi chez les hommes (Rififi)" is called nothing but the pinnacle of Jules Dassin, the best European film noir, an example of world cinema classics etc. Roger Ebert, who assigned the film a maximum of 4 stars https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-rififi-1954, other, lesser-known American film critics, directly state that such achievements of American cinema as Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing", Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs", Stephen Soderberg's "Ocean's Eleven", Brian Singer's "The Usual Suspects", and even "Mission: Impossible" by Brian De Palma were shot under the influence of Dassin's "Du rififi chez les hommes (Rififi)".
No less highly the film "Du rififi chez les hommes (Rififi)" was appreciated by modern moviegoers. 73% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users worldwide rated the film 8 to 10. Based on the foregoing, the rating of the film "Du rififi chez les hommes (Rififi)" according to FilmGourmand was 8.176, which allowed it to take 510th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
