- Rififi. As a nightclub singer named Viviane (Magali Noël) helpfully explains, the strange-sounding word is a slang term describing the romanticized "rough and tumble" lifestyles of Parisian gangsters. While all that violence and gunplay appears enjoyable enough when projected in silhouette as part of Viviane's show, the true lives of French criminals are considerably more somber. Just ask Tony le Stéphanois (Jean Servais). At the film's start, Tony has just finished serving a five-year robbery sentence in place of his young protege and friend, Jo (Carl Möhner). While inside, Tony acquired a tubercular cough and haggard appearance that make it appear as though far more than five years have passed. So when Jo and an Italian mobster named Mario (Robert Manuel) mention the possibility of robbing a jewelry store, Tony initially turns them down. "Sorry guys, I don't run so fast anymore," he explains.
- Slowly, however, Tony realizes that his health isn't the only thing to have changed over the past five years. His former girlfriend, Mado (Marie Sabouret), has attached herself to a thuggish nightclub owner named Pierre Grutter (Marcel Lupovici) in the latest in a series of infidelities. In a particularly brutal scene, Tony punishes Mado by whipping her with a belt in manner that couldn't be further removed from Viviane's playful interpretation of rififi. The whole affair convinces him to reconsider Mario and Jo's proposal, but Tony's not interested in messing around with guns and broken windows. According to Tony, they've "gotta go for the real thing. The jackpot. The safe!"
- So how do you break into a shop with "more alarms than a firehouse"? The answer: very quietly. After enlisting the help of master safecracker Cesar (played by director Jules Dassin himself), the crew rehearses and recites their plans in the manner that has become standard practice in all modern caper films. Then, in Rififi's most famous sequence, the thieves go over half an hour without saying a word as they infiltrate the jewelry store from the apartment above. While Rififi wasn't the first film to depict the details of a heist in this manner, an honor that belongs to John Huston's excellent The Asphalt Jungle, you'd be hard pressed to find a more immersive, dialogue-free heist sequence in any film before or since this one. That's not to say that things are completely quiet, however. By allowing a stray piano key or the clang of a metal tool to occasionally pierce the curtain of silence, Dassin ramps up the tension perfectly as the audience constantly worries about those sensitive alarms we know are listening downstairs. Even when the caper appears to have been successfully accomplished, one still frets over the street cops lurking outside, whether they're eying cigarette cases or getaway cars. Finally, the men escape with the loot, and we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Temporary relief, of course.
- As is so often the case in heist films, the problem here is that these criminals are only human. Like his spiritual predecessor, The Asphalt Jungle's Doc Riedenschneider, Cesar allows his libido to trump his brains when he gives the lovely Viviane one of the finer rings they've swiped. Needless to say, it doesn't take a grifter like Grutter long to piece together the news reports of a jewel theft, this suspicious ring, and the marks on Mado's back. That means serious trouble for the gang, including murder, kidnapping, and the lone survivor's final, delirious drive home to save Jo's young son, Tonio. The only glimmer of hope at the film's end comes from the possibility that young Tonio will grow up into a life completely free of rififi. Otherwise, it's a truly tragic ending for a group of surprisingly sympathetic crooks, but, to borrow Tony's phrase, "you know the rules." Rififi helped to ensure that heist films would still be playing by those same rules over fifty years later.
- Based on a novel by Auguste Le Breton, the plot of which was changed dramatically for the film. Apparently, this led to a gun being drawn on Jules Dassin at one point.
- I hadn't realized this earlier, but Reservoir Dogs imitated the scene in which Tony and Jo are reviewing the street plan.
