Rififi

Sunday, February 24, 2008

OK, a while back I was checking out some films by Jean-Pierre Melville, a french director who made some awesome crime films, most notably Le Samourai. I had heard great things about an early flick of his, Bob le Flambeur, and was disappointed to find that it was a boring and talky heist film where the heist never really happens.

That came out in 1955. That very same year, another French heist movie by the name of Rififi was released, and it turns out this is the movie I had imagined in my head when I saw Bob. It's an exciting, visually stylish, badass, cold-hearted tough guy movie with a fucking awesome heist sequence and classic noir ending. It felt more like a Melville film than Bob did. In fact, there is more than a passing similarity to one of Melville's later films, Le Cercle Rouge, especially the 30 minute, dialogue-free heist sequence smack dab in the middle of the film. So maybe Melville caught this one after Bob came out and thought "Fuck! That's the movie I should have made!"

Bottom line, this movie is pretty kickass, and the heist sequence pretty much set the template for every classic heist sequence to follow. It's so fucking good, it puts glossy bullshit like Brett Ratner's After the Sunset to shame, seeming infinitely smarter, more stylish and more exciting even though he did it over 50 years ago. However, give a little credit where it's due, this movie does owe a heavy debt to the Americon crime films that came before it. Especially John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, (maybe the first heist movie? Dunno.), so much so that it pretty much just steals the ending of that movie, what with the lead character speeding around in a car while bleeding to death. Although there are no horses in this version.