Cheap Rififi - Criterion Collection (DVD) (Jean Servais, Carl Möhner, Robert Manuel) (Jules Dassin) Price

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Customer Reviews of Rififi - Criterion Collection

The Criterion DVD is not perfect, some very annoying lines are visible in a couple of chapters, but image depth & detail is as good as any DVD from this period. It's odd that this huge hit & Quentin Tarantino favorite (several things in "Reservoir Dogs" are direct modifications of things in "Rififi") has been unavailable in any decent home-viewing form for so many years (I've been watching awful video copies for years and very few video stores carried those). The quality of the picture is especially important in this film because the carefully picked neighborhoods in Paris and the other locations outside it where the film was shot are a key ingredient and they literally push it beyond the level of Jacques Becker's classic 1953 film "Touchez Pas Au Grisbi" (Honor Among Thieves) starring French macho icon Jean Gabin, which lacks enough location shooing, and inspired Dassin's film in more ways than one (especially since Becker was a friend of Dassin's who went to bat for him in France during the five years he was unemployed in Europe when the long arm of the Hollywood blacklist prevented him from even working over there by refusing to distribute his films in the states). To shoot any film that's supposed to be realistic and not working on a fantastic level like "Singin in the Rain" or "The Red Shoes" in the studio is to cheapen it irreparably 98 out of a 100 times. Authentic, wordlessly expressive neighborhoods are part and parcel of a 'real' atmosphere and they put it in context.

Dassin got paid very little by the producer of the film who was basically taking advantage of his dire straits to get a cheap director. However, he had asked for a percentage of the gross in his contract, which the producer gave up thinking it would come to nothing anyway. A year later the film was a HUGE HIT and even eventually got distributed in both dubbed and subtitled versionS in the States, and those points made Dassin a lot of money and independent of the blacklist. The film was popular enough to have a hilarious parody of it made by Mario Monicelli called "Big Deal on Madonna Street" (also on Criterion) starring Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman, etc. Dassin himself made a parody to even greater international success with the fantastic and endlessly immitated "Topkapi" starring Maximillian Schell, Peter Ustinov, and his wife Melina Mercouri (John Woo and Brian De Palma need to come up with a few new original ideas of their own).

Above and beyond the great film itself, Criterion has included a 30 minute Dassin interview that's maybe the best short interview with a famous Director I've ever seen. At nearly 90 years of age, the guy's still going strong, and tells one great fascinating story after another, stuff more edifying than any 'audio commentary' (who the hell invented that waste of time anyway?) nonsense ever is.

Even though his career was nearly ruined by guys like Kazan and Robert Rossen who decided to 'patriotically' rat on some of these comm[unist] rats that they were sick of seeing weild power in the arts, he makes it obvious by the way he talks about them, that he doesn't bear a grudge against them for almost forcing him to flip burgers for a living, and that he knows the real culprits were the studio heads and politicians who started that witch-hunt business in the first place. ... He did hold a grudge in 1955 though when he himself played the Italian safe-cracker character in "Rififi" who gets shot by Jean Servais after he delivers the immortal line "You know Macaroni...I liked you...but you know what the rules are."

Superb film noir on DVD
"Rififi", made in France in 1954, was a groundbreaking film at the time of its release and still holds up well today. It is a film about a caper heist and the 28 minute jewelry store robbery, filmed with no dialog or music, is the highlight of the film. However, the film offers much more. The actors are all superb and memorable. Director Jules Dassin had a very small budget and had to use lesser known actors. Jean Servais, gaunt and haggard after years of alcoholism is perfect as Tony, the leader of the gang. Dassin himself plays Cesare, the safe cracker whose careless indiscretions following the robbery spoils their "perfect crime". The film also features superb cinematographer, gritty and stark, and the city of Paris becomes a character in itself. Dassin would only film outdoor scenes on cloudy and rainy days which gives the film a documentary-type feel.

Criterion's DVD release is superb. The print is flawless, as far as I could tell on my 35" screen, and I could not see any flaws or distractions. This is the original un-cut version of the film. The film was initially condemned by the Catholic Church in the U.S. and slapped with a "C" rating. It was then released with 3 scenes edited and a Bible verse flashed onto the screen before the opening credits! This is the version Dassin intented without the cuts or the Bible verse. A dubbed version is included for those who dislike reading sub-titles.

Other extras include an essay, trailer, and a 30 minute interview with Jules Dassin which was filmed in the summer of 2000. Dassin talks about the blacklist, which ended his career in Hollywood in the early 50s, and about the making of "Rififi" in France and how it ressurected his career.

Rififi needs editing? Hardly.
Rififi needs editing? Hardly. Rififi needs nothing but bowing down to. Some college Joes from Collegeville need editing. The permanent kind. Can there honestly be a place in the world out there called "Collegeville"?