Rififi (1955) on Netflix
Tony le Stéphanois is out of prison after five years. He refuses a smash-and-grab from Jo and Mario, then finds Mado with Pierre Grutter and proposes robbing a jeweler's safe.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb8.1/1039,726 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
Tony le Stéphanois returns from a five-year prison term for jewel theft. His friend Jo and the Italian Mario Ferrati want him to join a smash-and-grab on a Parisian jeweler's front window, and he says no. Tony learns that his old girlfriend Mado took up with Pierre Grutter, a nightclub owner, during his years away. He takes her to his flat and beats her. Tony changes his answer: he will help, but on a harder job, the store's safe. Mario brings in César le Milanais, a safecracker, and the men plan how to enter and silence the alarm.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Rififi (1955)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Offered American distribution only if he renounced his past, Jules Dassin refused; United Artists released Rififi through a dummy corporation with Dassin credited, making him the first to break the Hollywood blacklist.
- The half-hour heist scene was based on a real 1899 burglary on Marseille's cours St-Louis, in which a gang cut through the floor of a travel agency and used an umbrella to catch the debris before robbing the jeweller's shop below.
- Mexico's interior ministry banned Rififi after burglaries copied its heist scene, and Finland banned it in 1955, then released it severely cut in 1959 with an extra tax.
- Jules Dassin wrote the Rififi screenplay in English in six days with screenwriter René Wheeler, who translated it into French; Dassin hated the novel and its racist theme pitting dark Arabs and North Africans against light-skinned Europeans.
- Composer Georges Auric told Dassin he would write music for the silent half-hour heist scene anyway "because you need to be protected"; after seeing the film with and without it, he agreed the scene should be unscored.
- Jules Dassin took the part of the Italian safecracker César himself after the Italian actor he had cast never got the contract, saying he "had to put on the mustache and do the part myself".
- The Roman Catholic Legion of Decency challenged the film, which suffered three brief cuts and opened with a title card quoting the Book of Proverbs before passing with a B rating.
- In Britain, Rififi was paired with the science fiction film The Quatermass Xperiment, the most successful double-bill release in UK cinemas in all of 1955.
