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Rififi

1955 · TMDB 7.8 · Du rififi chez les hommes

Directed by Jules Dassin

Out of prison after a five-year stretch, jewel thief Tony turns down a quick job his friend Jo offers him, until he discovers that his old girlfriend Mado has become the lover of local gangster Pierre Grutter during Tony's absence. Expanding a minor smash-and-grab into a full-scale jewel heist, Tony and his crew appear to get away clean, but their actions after the job is completed threaten the lives of everyone involved.

Why it matters

Jules Dassin's Parisian jewel robbery, built around a thirty-minute wordless safe-cracking sequence that remains the genre's high-water mark of pure process. The film's charm is inseparable from its bitterness.

From The Heist Film Slips Its Own Cuffs

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