Yesterday morning I read in the paper the obituary for director Jules Dassin. Several years ago I was able to screen the new 35mm print of Rififi (Du rififi chez les homes, 1955) that was re-released by Rialto Pictures at my film series, and an absolute pleasure to see. Rififi (argot French slang for “a brutal show of force” in reference to “macho tough guy posturing”) is a beautifully orchestrated heist film that is famous for a pivotal sequence just over a half-hour long that has no music or dialogue – and which has, in many ways, become a template for many of the heist films that followed. On IMDB (where, if you click on Jules Dassin you instead, and curiously, get a picture of only his nose and all of Sophia Loren!) there’s lots of fun trivia associated with Rififi, but one particular nugget bears repeating in its entirety:

“The argot slang that the novel was written in was incomprehensible to writer/director Jules Dassin, so much so that he had to have the producer who suggested it, read it to him. The producer initially refused because he had been courting a woman for some time and had ‘plans’ that night. Dassin told him that he’d lost his woman and that he had to come over and read it to him (which he did). When he finally understood the story he claims that he was “shocked” by its content (the story involves necrophilia, amongst other things) and was prepared to tell Henri Bérard that he didn’t want to do the film. What changed his mind was his blacklist-induced poverty. He then cut Auguste Le Breton’s novel down to a story of a heist (which was only a small element of the actual story). Le Breton was infuriated and came to Dassin and asked, ‘Where is my book?’ Dassin explained the situation to him, but Le Breton ignored him and simply repeated ‘Where is my book?’ until eventually drawing a pistol and placing it on the table as a threat. Dassin claims that the threat of violence over such a matter and the appearance of Le Breton was so ridiculous that he simply broke out with laughter. Le Breton then laughed and the two got along fine, despite the disagreement.” (IMDB.com, trivia)

There is a lot of information in the “trivia” above that can act as a springboard to some very serious topics. Topics relating to women, “Blacklist-induced poverty,” humor, grace, and dignity. Dassin would finally meet the woman of his dreams 11-years after Rififi, when he married the Greek actress (and later politician) Melina Mercouri in 1966. He would go on to direct her in seven films, including his hit movie Never on Sunday (1960). When Mercouri passed away in 1994 Dassin made it his priority to accomplish his departed wife’s main unrealized goal: to get the British Museum to return the marble sculptures taken from the Parthenon (the Elgin Marbles) by Thomas Bruce in the early 1800’s. He is quoted in an AP wire interview from 1997 as saying “If there is anything I want to be remembered for it is for fulfilling Melina’s dream.”

Dassin started his career as an assistant to Alfred Hitchcock on Mr and Mrs. Smith (1941), his first film was based on Edgar Allan Poe’s story, The Tell-Tale Heart (1941), and he went on to direct features that had him working with the likes of Joan Crawford and John Wayne in Reunion in France (1942), Burt Lancaster in Brute Force (1947), and Barry Fitzgerald in Naked City (1948), but he had to abandon Hollywood in the 1950’s after being denounced by his contemporaries and being placed on the infamous entertainment industry blacklist. He left the U.S. for London and made Night in the City (1950) with Richard Widmark and continued working until Circle of Two (1980) with Richard Burton.

TCM has dutifully shifted programming to honor Dassin, and more information can be found at:

http://www.tcm.com/movienews/index/?cid=197814

One last note: I remember being in fifth-grade when our teacher lugged out a 16mm projector to screen us a short film based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. She was clearly unfamiliar with the story, because an early scene showed the would-be-murderer chop up a chicken for dinner, at which point fellow fourth-grader (and avid Poe fan) Stephan Gross blurted out: “And next he’s going to chop up the old man, just like that chicken!” The teacher then promptly turned off the projector, as the class groaned in disappointment. For my part, I immediately went out and read as many Edgar Allan Poe stories as I could get my hands on.

Seeing Dassin’s obituary reminded me that, hey! – I never did finish seeing that short film. Could it have been Dassin’s version? So I rented it last night from our local video/dvd rental store (it can be found as an “extra” on one of the disks for The Complete Thin Man Collection). Alas, no chickens in this one, but Dassin’s debut effort sports an assured eye for cinematic detail. I especially liked the scene where the young man barges into the old man’s room with murder on his mind; the POV looking at his flashlight fills the screen like a black-and-white retina scan (evoking the old man’s white eye), and as we cut to another perspective the light beam shows us a storm of dust that mimics the rain outside. The acting was a bit rough, but Dassin clearly had a flair for visuals that would mature nicely in the films to come.