lewelle1965

[lewelle1965]

Xeno & Ripley taking a break

[lewelle1965]

Portrait of Melina Mercouri for Topkapi directed by Jules Dassin, 1964

[lewelle1965]

Melina Mercouri and Romy Schneider in 10:30 P.M. Summer directed by Jules Dassin, 1966

[lewelle1965]

Melina Mercouri, Peter Ustinov and Maximilian Schell in Topkapi (1964), directed by Jules Dassin.  This is Jules’ second entry on the New York Times list of the 1,000 Best Films, after Never on Sunday.

[lewelle1965]

The Law (1959)

“Released in 1959 and headlined by the heavy hitters Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni, Melina Mercouri, Yves Montand, and others, The Law is a melodramatic gem.”

https://bit.ly/2LIA09s

[lewelle1965]

U.S. actor Anthony Perkins in 1961 at the Acropolis of Athens, Greece, during a break from filming the drama film Phaedra (USA, 1962, dir. Jules Dassin) | photo François Pages / Paris Match

[lewelle1965]

Melina Mercouri and her husband, Jules Dassin

[lewelle1965]

[lewelle1965]

The Freak Accident of Jules Dassin

[lewelle1965]

Jules Dassin in Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955)

Cast: Jean Servais, Carl Möhner, Robert Manuel, Jules Dassin, Janine Darcey, Pierre Grasset, Robert Hossein, Magali Noël, Marcel Lupovici, Marie Sabouret, Dominque Maurin. Screenplay: Jules Dassin, René Wheeler, Auguste Le Breton, based on a novel by Le Breton. Cinematography: Philippe Agostini. Production design: Alexandre Trauner. Film editing: Roger Dwyre. Music: Georges Auric. 

The success of Rififi had a lasting effect on the “caper” or “heist” genre, which is still with us in one form or another, including the Mission: Impossible movies. Dassin’s 30-minute sequence depicting the break-in and safe-cracking was hailed as a tour de force. I can’t help wondering if Robert Bresson saw Rififi before he made his great 1956 film A Man Escaped, which takes a similar wordless and music-free approach to showing the preparations for Fontaine’s prison break. Other than that, of course, nothing could be further from Fontaine’s noble efforts to find freedom than the larcenous thuggery of Dassin’s jewel thieves. Dassin knows, of course, that audiences respond positively to cleverness and skill, which is virtually all that his quartet of thieves have going for them. Tony (Jean Servais) is a brutal ex-con who beats his former mistress (Marie Sabouret) with a belt; Jo (Carl Möhner) is a swaggering, handsome guy for whom Tony took the rap for an earlier heist because Jo has a wife and child; Mario (Robert Manuel) is an easy-going ne'er-do-well; and César (Dassin under the pseudonym Perlo Vita) is a professional safe-cracker. Dassin manipulates us into thinking of these guys as heroes, if only because the gang led by Pierre Grutter (Marcel Lupovici), who wants to muscle in on their ill-gotten gains, is even worse. In the end, both sides are wiped out, but not before Jo’s little boy (Dominique Maurin) is kidnapped and held for ransom. The final sequence of the film is particularly harrowing, especially to contemporary viewers used to mandated seatbelts and conscientious childproofing: A dying Tony drives the 5-year-old boy across Paris in an open convertible as the delighted kid stands on and even clambers over the seats of the speeding car. For all its unpleasantness, Rififi is as memorable as it was influential. It led to countless imitations, usually more light-hearted, including Dassin’s own Topkapi (1964). It also revived Dassin’s career, which had been at a standstill after he was blacklisted in Hollywood; Rififi’s international success was a defiant nose-thumbing directed at HUAC’s witch hunts.

[lewelle1965]

Mélina Mercouri dans Jamais le dimanche de Jules Dassin, 1960.

[lewelle1965]

[lewelle1965]

Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison in The Doors.

[lewelle1965]

Sybil Danning in The Salamander (1981)

[lewelle1965]

Caroline Munro

[lewelle1965]

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005) dir. Joe Wright

[lewelle1965]