The Essentials: The 8 Best Jules Dassin Films

“Rififi” (1955)

Once the ’50s hit, Dassin found himself on the streets of Paris, barely speaking French and desperately low on funds. It took him a few years to find his footing, but once he persuaded Jean-Pierre Melville to hand him the reins of a heist film, the crown jewel of his oeuvre took form. Working on a low budget, without a starry cast and with a book he wasn’t particularly fond of, the director did some cinematic shape-shifting to make “Rififi” the unforgettable masterpiece of crime that it is, and a “paean to work” as Jamie Hook’s great Criterion essay points out. Focused on a grizzled old-time gangster fresh out of jail, Tony “le Stephanois” (Jean Servais), the film twangs with the wrought tension of piano wire as it expertly details the orchestration of a jewelry heist. Cooked up by Tony’s protege Jo (Carl Mohner) and local Italian crook Mario Ferrati (Robert Manuel), and fatally assisted by Mario’s safe-cracking friend Cesar (Dassin himself, as ‘Perlo Vita’), the heist anticipated Melville’s “Le Cercle Rouge” by 15 years and took up a quarter of the film’s running time in near-total silence. Servais is the spitting image of the classic weary-faced gangster, brushing off the weight of world on his shoulders in super-cool flicks, while the rest of gang get immortalized in the film’s iconic centerpiece. His string of previous films highlighted Dassin’s keen eye for detail, but the cinema gods were clearly one step ahead of everyone else. Down on his luck, Dassin made his greatest creative endeavor; a supremely influential and stirringly existential work that chiseled his cinematic legacy even while getting banned in several countries and condemned by the American Legion of Decency for its frank and realistic portrayal of thieves and drug addicts. “Rififi” is more than its infamous robbery (if it were only that, it’d be enough), with scenes like the song-and-dance number that reveals the meaning of the title, and the devastating third act when everything tragically unravels, where each scene (beautifully shot by Philippe Agostini) is a visual stamp on the fate of the tough guy. It’s a redefining genre piece that pushes conventional boundaries to make way for movie magic.

“The Law” (1959)

Buried under more prestigious titles and award contenders, “The Law” is an under-seen, undervalued picture with sordid theatrics and an odd kind of magnetism. It boasts a magnificent ensemble cast, a firecracker of a screenplay (Dassin’s own adaptation of Roger Vailland‘s novel, with assistance from Diego Fabri and Françoise Giroud) and soap-opera antics that are, from a big-picture vantage point, more operatic than soapy. Put Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni, Yves Montand, Melina Mercouri and Pierre Brasseur in a film, and sizzle of all kinds is guaranteed. The lust for sex, power, respect and passion are all bottled in a small Italian port-town of Porto Manacore, where gorgeous Marietta (Lollobrigida, matching her stunning beauty with some marvelous acting), who is part of a household of women under the tutelage of Don Cesare (Brasseur), fancies the newly arrived agronomist Enrico (can you imagine Mastroianni referred to as ‘farmer?’). He’s wary of her advances and claims he can’t be with her because she doesn’t have a dowry, which prompts Marietta to steal from a Swiss tourist. In parallel, corrupt crook Matteo Brigante (Montand, reveling in the despicable nature of his character like a mischievous toddler splashing around in a bathtub) enforces the law through tyranny and loves participating in the town’s game where chosen boss and deputy humiliate whomever they want (in what could be the cruelest drinking game depicted on film). Mercouri plays a depressed judge’s wife who stars in her own Russian novel and goes after Brigante’s young son, Francesco (Raf Mattioli). “The Law” has qualities of a fairytale, with Cinderella-like Marietta and the women who despise her, a perverse nature that teases rampant misogyny were it not for Lollobrigida’s iron-willed Marietta dictating events, and a volatile humor (Montand’s reaction to getting cut is brilliant; “is it deep?”). It’s not Dassin’s greatest achievement, but an essential curio for its compelling eccentricities and fiery performances, and a shining example of the director’s rollicking affair with melodrama. And if you need to track it down, its available on DVD via Oscilloscope.

“Never On Sunday” (1960)

Similar to the film discussed in the previous entry, “Never On Sunday” dwindles in comparison to Dassin’s masterpieces of corrupt and corruptible occupations —but only when judged on a purely cerebral and technical basis. This ode to the boisterous, charmingly stubborn Greek spirit is not precisely controlled with its direction, and the childish arrogance of the male lead is often blatantly exaggerated to irritate (“I, an American boy scout, will bring harmony into your life!” is an actual line in this Oscar-nominated screenplay..), but the film is Melina Mercouri’s bid for stardom. It’s impossible to take your eyes off of her: she was 40 at the time but exhibited enough sex appeal to shame all of Hollywood’s female ageist standards. She plays the free-spirited Ilya, a renowned prostitute in the Greek town of Piraeus who rejects anything ugly to the point of giving Greek tragedies happy endings (“..and then they all go to the seashore!”), and meets her stubborn match in Homer (Dassin), a traveling American writer who decides to “save” her because to him, you see, she’s more of a symbol than a woman. Mercouri’s magical and lively display —which includes dancing, singing, and the sort of temperament a bird would have once let out of its cage— earned her much deserved attention, including a Cannes acting prize and an Academy Award nomination. She single-handedly raises “Never On Sunday” to essential status and notches another kind of legacy for Dassin (who would go on to marry Mercouri and play a big part with her in Greek politics); the kind that celebrates spirit over scholarly intellectuality, and has its heart firmly beating in the right place.