Rififi (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray + DVD)

American director Jules Dassin has crafted one of the greatest French heist thrillers of all time with Rififi, creating a noir gangster story constructed around a 33 minute safe cracking sequence, which was duplicated and copied several times after and yet never surpassed. The story of veteran criminals that gather a group of specialists together to carry out a big score was taken from John Huston's earlier noir classic The Asphalt Jungle. Jules Dassin was an American director in exile in Paris because his American career had been ruthlessly destroyed by the House of Un-American Activities committee who named him a communist during the McCarthy witch-hunt.nBy 1955, Dassin was penniless and desperate and when a French agency approached him to direct the film Rififi; he accepted even though admitting to hating the script. And yet Rififi is now considered Dassin's greatest film and one of the first films that pioneered the French noir gangster films of the 50's next to Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob Le Flambeur. 

What makes Rififi masterful is the 33 minute safe cracking sequence in the center of the story, that makes the film as memorable and legendary as it is. The whole scene is so suspenseful, authentic and done in such precise detail that every time I witness this criminal team at work I am in complete awe; and my tension level is so high that any little sound makes my heart skip a beat. Throughout the whole 33 minutes you hear nothing but the men's breathing, muffled coughing, light taps and bangs, plaster being chipped away and lightly falling into an umbrella to catch it, and when inside the building; the light screech of a power drill that is used to cut inside the back of the safe. So meticulous and specific was the construction and detail of the heist scene that the film was banned in some countries because of a series of burglaries mimicking its scene; and because many feared the heist scene was an instructional guide to successfully commit crimes.