Streaming: Rififi

(Du rififi chez les hommes)

April 29–July 19, 2020

The best of all heist movies.

Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice
featuring

Jean Servais, Carl Möhner, Robert Manuel, Jules Dassin,

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Organized around a painstakingly plotted, brilliantly executed heist, Rififi inspired innumerable crime films and even a few actual crimes. Out of prison and out of cash, Tony Le Stéphanois (Jean Servais) joins an international band of burglars to organize, rehearse, and implement an ingenious plan to rob the safe of a Parisian jewelry store. The film documents their work in detail, culminating in an enthralling break-in sequence that plays out in near silence, with only chisels, drills, and scraping metal for a soundtrack. The suspense is exhilarating, but with an undertow of brutality, and the plot veers toward tragedy as the thieves’ professionalism is undone by their desires and personal ties. Blacklisted American director Jules Dassin (who also plays Cesar the safecracker, under the pseudonym Perlo Vita) won the Best Director prize at Cannes for this work that François Truffaut called “the best film noir I’ve ever seen.”

Juliet Clark
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Jules Dassin
  • René Wheeler
  • Auguste Le Breton
Based On
  • the novel by Auguste Le Breton

Cinematographer
  • Philippe Agostini
Language
  • French
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W
  • Digital streaming
  • 118 mins
Source
  • Rialto Pictures
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View Rififi documents  

Rififi (flyer), New Yorker Films, 2000

Du rififi chez les hommes (Rififi) (program note), Toronto Film Society, 1980

Du rififi chez les hommes (program note), Toronto Film Society, Barry Chapman, 1980

Rififi (program), College of William and Mary. Festival Film Society, D.P., 1968

Terse melodrama in French 'Rififi' (review), New York World-Telegram, Alton Cook, 1956

'Rififi,' saga of gem heist, is a jewel (review), New York Daily Mirror, Justin Gilbert, 1955

Rififi (program note)

Foreign films : Du rififi chez les hommes (review), Variety, Gene Moskowitz

'Rififi' (credits)

Rififi (program note)

Displaying 10 of 12 publicly available documents.


View all Rififi documentation on CineFiles.