Evento

Rififi @ Robert Classic French Film Festival

Sunday, March 20, 7 p.m.
Rififi/Du rififi chez les hommes

Jules Dassin, 1955, 118 min., B&W, Blu-ray projection source
After making such American noir classics as "Brute Force" and "The Naked City," the blacklisted director Jules Dassin went to Paris and embarked on his masterpiece: a twisting, turning tale of four ex-cons who hatch one last glorious robbery in the City of Light. "Rififi" is the ultimate heist movie, a mélange of suspense, brutality, and dark humor that was an international hit, earned Dassin the best-director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and has proven wildly influential on the decades of heist thrillers that have come in its wake.

Cited as "the best film noir I have ever seen" by no less an authority than François Truffaut, "Rififi" has earned legendary status. Michael Sragow in the New York Times calls the film "just about flawless," concluding: "For lovers of tough-guy moviemaking, 'Rififi' really means perfection." Rhapsodizing over the film's "the moody-poetic-nightworld artistry" -- and calling the central heist sequence "perfect, the underworld equivalent of a sublime French meal" -- Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman also observes that "as 'Rififi' goes on, it becomes as savage as 'Reservoir Dogs,' 'The Killing,' or any of the other dozens of films over which it still casts a shadow."

With an introduction and post-film discussion by Diane Carson, professor emeritus of film at St. Louis Community College at Meramec and adjunct professor of film studies at Webster University.