They are the tough ones!

Rififi 1955, dir. Jules Dassin

On a Dassin kick now. Rififi's a clockwork tale of burglary. Just like Le Trou (dir. Jacques Becker who died two weeks after it's completion) which was released five years later. Both films following expert criminals executing meticulously planned operations, in silence and in unspoken trust. Both films involve excavating through cement and stone with clever tools all sans dialogue and non diegetic sound. Both films addressing the men who break the law and the RATS who snitch and how both must be punished equally. Watching this after watching Uptight I wondered where his fascination with snitchery was coming from but duh! Dassin bore the brunt of Hollywood tattle tales who cooperated with the HUAC in providing names of their industry colleagues with alleged communist tendencies. He don't take too kindly to informers. 

Crime is a diligent and painstaking process. The devil's in the details and there's no room for error. I'd heard of the silent, quarter of the runtime heist sequence but I didn't realize that it wasn't the climax but is instead smack dab in the middle of the second act. We still have a kidnapping to deal with after the score! That's some movie making!  

Dassin plays Cesar in the film. "There's not a safe that can resist Cesar and not a woman that Cesar can resist." He's the man who squeals under pressure. But he knows the rules, and he accepts his fate. The camera pulls back in a POV as Tony The Stephanois backs up down the hallway (we float forward through the same hallway earlier in the film) and delivers three shots to Cesar's chest who is tied to a beam. It's cold blooded and so's the rest of the film -- right off the bat, Tony meets up with his ex and beats her with a belt -- but it isn't lacking in warmth! My heart wept as Tony and Jo watch their close friend's funeral procession (too many cops around!) hiding their face in their hands from afar in a momentarily stopped taxi. There's a scene where the performers at L'Age d'Or are rehearsing and it's a tangent but it's such a sweet and lovely depiction of Montmartre. And the child. My GOD! the playful child! Hooking a clothes hanger around his father's dangling foot as he read the paper on the couch. Hungry in his cowboy garb demanding "Un grand, grand, grand sandwich!" <3

There's no car chase in the heist film, instead it's just a race to the finish line, to safety not for the criminal but for an innocent, his godson who bears his name. It's a mission no longer about money but about love!! The way it's cut is DRAINING: The joy in this kid's face (!!), then the blood on Tony's shoes, the quickly passing trees, the Arc de Triomphe and the open sky. It's a gorgeous sequence that I couldn't believe managed to top the heist itself. And with that it's over, fin, and the just have seen their downfall.