Is “Rififi” The Best Jewel-Heist Movie?
I know a lot of people who think “Topkapi” is the classiest heist movie ever made, but I’d probably have to go with Jules Dassin’s 1955 flick “Rififi,” starring Jean Servais and Dassin himself. So I happy to say that “Rififi” is about to get a Bluray release. In the film, four men band together to commit an almost impossible theft, the burglary of an exclusive jewelry shop on the Rue de Rivoli. The centerpiece of the film is an intricate half-hour heist scene depicting the crime in detail, shot in near silence, without dialogue or music. The fictional burglary has been mimicked by criminals in actual crimes around the world. Dassin, in case you didn’t know, was an American director who was blacklisted in the 1950s and moved to France. He was married to Melina Mercouri, who, ironically, was one of the stars of that other great heist movie: “Topkapi.”
