X
- 2000
- Not Rated
- Rialto Pictures
- 1 h 58 m
- 2000
- Not Rated
- Rialto Pictures
- 1 h 58 m
Summary A reissue of a classic French caper thriller in which Tony, fresh out of prison, teams with three cohorts to pull off a major jewel heist which goes awry. The film's title is slang for "rough stuff," and it's robbery sequence is famous for its exciting, completely silent robbery scene.
Directed By: Jules Dassin
Written By: Auguste Le Breton, René Wheeler, Jules Dassin
- 2000
- Not Rated
- Rialto Pictures
- 1 h 58 m
- 2000
- Not Rated
- Rialto Pictures
- 1 h 58 m
Rififi (re-release)
97
8.1
Summary A reissue of a classic French caper thriller in which Tony, fresh out of prison, teams with three cohorts to pull off a major jewel heist which goes awry. The film's title is slang for "rough stuff," and it's robbery sequence is famous for its exciting, completely silent robbery scene.
Directed By: Jules Dassin
Written By: Auguste Le Breton, René Wheeler, Jules Dassin
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 13 Critic Reviews
97
100% Positive
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 13 Critic Reviews
97
100% Positive
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Manages to inject more than a little humor into this tension-filled genre classic.
But the human elements -- jealousy, anger, weakness, fortitude, loyalty, vengeance and honor, all acted out by a resolutely realistic cast -- make the movie extraordinary.
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 47 User Ratings
8.1
83% Positive
39 Ratings
39 Ratings
11% Mixed
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
6% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 47 User Ratings
8.1
83% Positive
39 Ratings
39 Ratings
11% Mixed
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
6% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
The blueprint for all modern heist films, Rififi is still a marvel for its central caper, a meticulous jewelry store burglary that occupies about a quarter of the running time and is conducted in almost complete silence, without dialogue or music. (Indeed, some real-life thieves have supposedly used Rififi as a how-to.) Part of the great cross-breeding of American and French crime movies that took place between 1945 and 1960 (from the film noir era in Hollywood to the dawn of the French New Wave), Rififi is a French-made film by an American expatriate director, Jules Dassin.
Its crooks, like the ones who appeared later in films by Jean-Pierre Melville and Jean-Luc Godard, had one foot in postwar French existential anomie and the other in American gangster cool learned from Humphrey Bogart. As so often happens in heist movies, the team pulls off the robbery with aplomb but get tripped up later by each member’s greed and envy and other human frailties. It was a formula so successful that it was soon parodied, by Mario Monicelli’s 1958 Big Deal on Madonna Street (where the thieves are much more inept) and, in turn, by Woody Allen in 2000’s Small Time Crooks.
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This is an amazing film. Extraordinary cinematography and acting (especially for 1955). The shots of 1955 Paris are amazing. A few of the camera shots have been oft repeated in lesser films. The script is tight and interesting. The best heist scene in film history, and without a word spoken. I'd never seen Rififi before and it is a classic film. Human frailty can lead to disaster and this film embodies that notion.
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One of the great crime thrillers, the benchmark all succeeding heist films have been measured against, it's no musty museum piece but a driving, compelling piece of work, redolent of the air of human frailty and fatalistic doom.
The granddaddy of all caper/heist movies. The work that defined the genre for the subsequent four decades of filmmakers, none of whom was able to surpass it for style or suspense.
The new print does justice to Philippe Agostini's splendidly atmospheric cinematography.
Among the picture's many surprises is a superb robbery scene filmed in a near-total silence that contrasts exhilaratingly with the noisy flamboyance of more recent films in this venerable genre.
The opening half-hour--the burglary of a jewelry store, filmed in meticulous detail--is as good as its inspiration in The Asphalt Jungle, but the film turns moralistic and sour in the last half, when the thieves fall out.
Great movie for such an age. There are some great scenes in it, especially the long situation, where no one is talking. The background to this movie are very interesting also. The director was already popular but have been denunciated by a colleague as a communist (McCarthy time) and needed to flee to Europe. There he has been mobbed also and been broke. This movie was a desperate move to get some money
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Rififi just seems legendarily enjoyable just by me and critics. If you're a user, please don't forget to check on this movie and give it a positive score if you loved it.
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"Rififi" is often considered the landmark film that modernized heist movies, and it shines brilliantly as a suave, sexy crime noir (that happens to be French). There are flashes of expressionism throughout - the tantalizing 'Rififi' nightclub song sequence and the shadowy night shots, but the classic quick-slung dialogue and refined criminal setting really give the movie its stride. Of course, it would be impossible to review this movie without mentioning the heist - a complex suspense sequence that takes up a full 28 minutes of running time and has no audio other than the slightest tap of a hammer or patter of a footstep. You can hear your own heartbeat race as each new step of their setup is revealed, bringing a new fear that it won't work or they may be discovered. Even though they carry the stride of first-class cons (they break into the jewelry store wearing complete suits), the characters express both confidence and doubt in their maneuvers, making every second of the continuity exhilarating. When it is finally over, you breathe a sigh of relief for these guys. Even though the heist is the pinnacle of the film, it only takes place halfway through. The second half is a moralist plug that chronicles the downfall of the cons after their perfect crime. Though it has some great scenes and completes the circle of development of each of the characters, it feels like the movie blew off most of its steam by the end. Even though the tension has all but left, there is a strange sense of loss seeing all the characters you cheered for in the first half take their inevitable fall. It's a classic tale, but told with complexity and craft that was completely new for its time, and served as a basis for every other heist-crime movie, from "Reservoir Dogs" to "Ocean's Eleven."
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If you like heist films that are filled with suspense and action then you’ll love the French film, Rififi. The film is about an aging gangster called Tony le Stephanois (Jean Servais) who reluctantly decides to team with 2 of his friends and a safecracker, called Cesar (Jules Dassin), and do one last job after he’s just been released from a five-year prison sentence. But the heist isn’t easy, the hardness of the job is particularly emphasised when Tony shows how sensitive the alarm system in jewellery shop, they plan to rob, is. Overall most of the film kept me interested right up until the last minute. But scenes in the film were a bit slow and seemed unrelated to the rest of the movie. And I think these scenes made the film too long and they should have been shortened down or deleted altogether. I also think the film title is poorly chosen.
On the other hand most of the film was filled with action and suspense, my favourite scene in the film is the heist which had me sitting on the edge of my seat and hoping that the alarm wouldn’t go off. Shortly after this scene the film also kept me interested by showing that the robbers weren’t safe even after the heist seemed to be successful. The film also got me interested at the beginning by showing Tony as a frail character who had just been released from a five-year prison sentence. This got me interested because it made me think that he may be too old and too weak to rob a jewellery shop with a very complicated alarm system.
I would recommend this film to anyone who is interested in Heist film that are filled with suspense and action and I would rate it 6 out of 10.
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Awards
New York Film Critics Circle Awards
• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations
Cannes Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
French Syndicate of Cinema Critics
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
