This Classic Thriller Gave Us an Iconic Heist Scene by Masterfully Using Its Secret Weapon (2024)

The Big Picture

Rififi, directed by Jules Dassin, stands out as a masterpiece in the heist genre for its 31-minute silent heist scene.
Dassin's choice to use silence in the heist scene serves as a bold commentary on the Hollywood blacklisting and McCarthyism of the era.
The legacy of Rififi as a transnational blend of Hollywood dynamism and French flair solidifies its place as a timeless classic.

Cinema is littered with some truly astounding, gripping, nerve-wrangling heist films. Steven Soderbergh's Oceans films, classics like Dog Day Afternoon and A Fish Called Wanda, and practically every film by the French director Jean-Pierre Melville are just some of the masterful works of art from the genre. But there is one film, with one very particular heist scene, that stands above the rest: Rififi by the American director Jules Dassin. Cinema fans in the know will be well aware of this film's well-regarded heist scene, which takes place over 31 minutes in complete silence, utilizing the quiet as a brilliant tension building device. This scene itself is a true masterpiece, but that should not take away from a film that is in and of itself a masterpiece, too. Dassin, freshly arrived into exile in Europe having been blacklisted in Hollywood for his Communist sympathies, made a strong statement with this film, giving this heist thriller more than just cool suits, jazz music, and fast-paced editing. This film goes above and beyond the tropes of the genre and exists truly on a level of its own. Film fans can consider themselves lucky that, unlike Salt of the Earth, which has similar political leanings and messages, Dassin's film wasn't blacklisted itself, thus allowing it to be passed down to audiences today.

Beneath the film's surface, there are many deeper meanings and insinuations lurking. Dassin makes his opinions on the Hollywood blacklisting explicitly clear for the audience, both in the heist scene and throughout the whole film. Coming out the year after Elia Kazan'sOn The Waterfront, that famously celebrated whistle-blowing and was Leonard Bernstein's only original film score, Dassin's film acts almost as a response to that. The silence that permeates a lot of the film is indicative of what many famous blacklisted Hollywood personae would have preferred instead of being named in the House Un-American Activities committee hearings. Dassin and those who had left-leaning, Communist sympathies were left to make their careers elsewhere, often producing some of their best work under different conditions. Rififi is one such example.

This Classic Thriller Gave Us an Iconic Heist Scene by Masterfully Using Its Secret Weapon (1)

Rififi

Not Rated

Crime

Drama

Thriller

'Rififi' Makes Silence the Deadliest Sound

Most viewers that come to Rififi, or Du rififi chez les hommes as it's known in France, come to the film because they have heard of its well-regarded, technically astonishing heist scene. Indeed, the choreography of the scene is only matched by a similar heist from Le Cercle Rouge by Jean-Pierre Melville, a titan of the heist genre. Dassin's film is fundamentally about a group of four men who come together to steal highly-prized jewelry from a Parisian boutique. The film, in a rather formulaic fashion, goes from the team of thieves coming together to the heist itself and then, naturally, the fall-out that comes after any such heist. But very little about the film, for which Dassin won the Best Director award at Cannes, is run-of-the-mill, least of all its heist scene.

The four men that make up the heist crew heist – played by Jean Servais, Robert Manuel, Carl Möhner, and Dassin himself – realize that the alarms used by the jewelry boutique are highly sensitive to noise. And so, they began to practice how much noise they can generate with the tapping of their hammers and the fall of debris as they crack through various doors and ceilings. The whole film is shot on location in Paris which gives it a sense of realism and tension that sound-stages would not be able to provide. Making the heist the film's centre-piece is markedly different from a well-renowned stylistic forebear to Dassin's film, John Huston's 1950 heist film The Asphalt Jungle, one of the director's best. The men in Rififi do not talk as they act out the heist, and there is no music during this scene either. In spite of the fact that it is a rather slow-moving scene, almost as if it were a choreographed ballet (Dassin's character is even wearing ballet slippers), the scene is high-octane and incredibly tense, both for the men themselves and for the viewers. The audience, as much as the men, know what's at stake.

1:45

This Early Mission: Impossible Heist Is Still the Franchise’s Best

In the right director's hands, a floppy drive can be as tense as a helicopter chase.

The thieves complete their job with surgical precision as the audience is left breathless at what has unfolded before their very eyes. Dassin's brave and bold decision to choose silence for this scene, where his film-making cannot hide behind music and dialogue, lends itself to the jeopardy of the scene too, as if he too is committing a heist much like his characters. The quiet thrills of the film have their roots in the silent films from the early days of Hollywood, which had to make use exclusively of film-making techniques in order to portray their story.

Is There a Deeper Meaning to the Silence in 'Rififi'?

When looking at a film's deeper meaning, one must contextualize it by what other influential films came out roughly around the same time and the wider socio-political scene. Kazan's On The Waterfront had won enormously at the Academy Awards the previous year and blacklisted writers like Dalton Trumbo were winning Oscars by writing under pseudonyms. The landscape in Hollywood was fraught and tense. Dassin had films fall through because of his political beliefs, and so he left America and went to France to produce films in a country and an industry that would allow him to do so.

But how does he represent that in Rififi? Dassin clearly directs the film with great respect and affectation for physical labor, devoting so much time in his film to such acts. The men working in silence, diligently carrying out their tasks, is a testament to the many blue-collar jobs that allow films to be made. Hollywood, with its various unions and regulations, has only survived on the back of such hard labor. And as such, Dassin is paying homage and respect to the very act of film-making with this glorious heist scene.

In Rififi, noise is the enemy and silence is its secret weapon that must be used carefully and efficiently. The choice to have the heist scene in complete silence, and the men succeed in such silence, is Dassin sending up the McCarthyite witch-hunt of the House Un-American Activities committee and those in Hollywood who betrayed him by speaking out against him. There is a code of honor among thieves, and Tony Le Stephanois, played by Servais, is just released from prison for refusing to name his accomplices from a jewel heist committed some years ago. The film literally celebrates the acts of loyal silence that exists among friends and thieves, and villifies the very noise that ruins such bonds. Dassin's first film in exile, by far his best and most influential, is a bold riposte against those who sought to end his career.

'Rififi's Legacy Stands the Test of Time

Dassin's film will rightfully go down in history as one of the great gangster films with arguably the greatest heist sequence ever put to film. The film still astonishes modern audiences with its haunting cinematography, luscious score, and decadent settings and costumes. Rififi is a fantastic blend of Hollywood dynamism with French cinematic flair and is a truly transnational film in much the same way Akira Kurosawa's works are. The film emerged just before the French New Wave and is arguably a key component of the movement for how it took the tropes of American studio film-making and mixed that with the boundary-pushing zing of French cinema. The results speak for themselves.

Rififi is still an incredibly tense, nervy watch for any viewer. The heist contains so many potential pitfalls that its success is never guaranteed. Even more so, when rogue police officers start walking around outside the building with looks of great suspicion on their faces. Dassin very methodically ensured the film had loud bangs and a bombastic score either side of the heist scene to further increase the impact of the 30 minutes of silence. The silence is used expertly to build the tension, but also means something deeper to the director who had been scorned by people he respected and called friends back in Hollywood. The silence is a proverbial middle-finger to those who appeared before the HUAC committee and denounced their colleagues. Dassin's film, a glorious testament to the act of hard work, will stand the test of time for how it celebrates the bond of men and makes noise the enemy.

Rififi is currently not available to stream in the U.S.