Paris. After five years, criminal Tony gets released from jail. His associate, Jo, invites him to do a robbery of a jewel store, together with Mario and Cesar, but Tony declines. However, when he finds out his ex-girlfriend, Mado, is now the girlfriend of his rival, gangster Pierre Gruter, Tony changes his mind and accepts Jo's proposal—but under condition that they go for the main prize, the vault in the jewel store. After a lot of preparation, Tony, Jo, Mario and Cesar storm the first floor, drill a hole on the ceiling, descend down into the store, disable the alarm and spend the night cracking the vault. They escape with a loot worth a fortune. Cesar gives one ring from the vault to a girl, who in turn gets into possession of Gruter who kidnaps him, kills Mario and realizes Tony and Jo have the loot. Gruter's thugs kidnap Jo's kid and demand the loot for ransom. Tony finds out the warehouse where the kid is held and kills Gruter's gang. Jo is killed and Tony himself is wounded, but manages to drive the kid safely to his mother.
American director Jules Dassin's first French film, one of the best movies of the decade, "Rififi" is a shining crime film that still seems equally as fresh and modern today as it was back during its premiere, and eventually became the "golden standard" for hundreds of future heist films that tried to copy it. Filmed in independent conditions, Dassin exploited all the minimum resources to achieve a maximum result thanks to a tight script where every little detail, subplot and character have a purpose and role later on, circling out the impression with a clear strategy and sense where all these events are going and how to achieve them, constructing one giant commentary on greed and its consequences which just spiral more and more out of control. Everything is remarkably compact: there is no 'empty walk', everything has a purpose later on in the finale, so many details seem justified: for instance, the studious preparation of the four criminals for the robbery (Tony observes that the last store is closing at around 10:00 pm, whereas the earliest new business activity is a delivery of the florist at 5:30 am, concluding they have that much time during the night for the robbery). The highlight is definitely the bravura, 'tour-de-force' 25-minute heist sequence that lasts the entire night, where the four criminals drill a hole on the ceiling, descend down, block the alarm thanks to a fire extinguisher and then spend the entire remaining time cracking the vault: it was filmed without any music or dialogue, yet its dynamics reach almost Hitchcock's intensity of suspense. The second highlight is also the finale, where Tony is racing against time in order to save Jo's kidnapped kid before the gangsters figure out that Jo will not pay the ransom to them. It all ends with an expressionistic sequence of a nightmarish car drive with the kid, completing the high impression of this dark classic that is rightfully considered a black pearl of cinema.
Grade:+++
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