Jules Dassin, Filmmaker: 1911 - 2008
Blacklisted writer/director Jules Dassin died Monday in Athens at the age of 96. A cause of death hasn’t been given.
Some will remember him best for his post-exile works starring future wife Melina Mercouri, Never on Sunday (1960) and Topkapi (1964). Others will treasure his earlier noir films Brute Force (1947) the prison escape drama with Burt Lancaster and Hume Cronyn; The Naked City (1948) which was entered into the National Film Registry in 2007 and which will always be remembered for the line “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them” or Night and the City (1950) starring Richard Widmark who died just last week.
Those movies are all great, but my best memory of Dassin will always be the terrific French heist picture Rififi (1954) about a jewelry store robbery gone bad. It’s the model against which I hold all caper films and very few of them stack up. Justifiably revered for the nearly silent 30-minute break-in sequence, the images that stick in my mind are of the weary, haunted and cruel face of Jean Servais as Tony Stephanois. He says everything by saying almost nothing.
Equal measures thrilling and bleak, Rififi leaves us with the bitter lesson that even the most carefully laid plans can all be blown apart by human weakness and stupidity.
Rififi was Dassin’s first film in exile after he left the United States unable to find work because of his former ties to the communist party, which he says he left in 1939 when the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Adolph Hitler.
You can read more of his biography in a number of excellent obituaries including this one in the New York Times.
I will remember Jules Dassin through his movies.
Filed under: News, Obituaries
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RIP.
Here I was just writing of Dassin’s transcendental touch with the Richard Widmark-starring Night and the City. It and Rififi are in my mind his two towering masterpieces.
In a way, it’s fitting that he leaves us a week after Widmark departed, as they will forever be tied together with Night and the City.
An excellent filmmaker. It would appear he had a great, full life.
As Woody Allen wrote about Bergman after he passed, one would hope that one’s art can save the artist, in some way, shape or form.
I too will remember Dassin through his movies.
Rififi is a stunning film.
RIP.
“Equal measures thrilling and bleak, Rififi leaves us with the bitter lesson that even the most carefully laid plans can all be blown apart by human weakness and stupidity.”
That’s why my plans always fail.
I’m glad that such a fine artist and man of integrity lived a long and accomplished life.
That’s why my plans always fail.
Ah, but I’m sure it’s other people’s human weakness and stupidity, sartre. ;-)
I happily take responsibility for my own stupidity and weakness. It might not be pretty, but at least it’s mine :-)
Sad news indeed, but he lead a full life so there is that. Rififi is a great film but I still need to catch up on more of his work.
Yes I think it’s time for a little Dassin retrospective.
sartre, you are both a gifted and wise individual. This is why we hold you in such great esteem around these parts.
No doubt that RIFIFI is his masterpiece, but NIGHT IN THE CITY, BRUTE FORCE and THE NAKED CITY are superb. A giant in film noir, and like his genre compatriot Richard Widmark who also lived to an extremely advanced age, he has left his mark in world cinema.