{"id":122,"date":"2021-05-30T13:46:49","date_gmt":"2021-05-30T13:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/?p=122"},"modified":"2021-05-30T13:48:21","modified_gmt":"2021-05-30T13:48:21","slug":"rififi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/?p=122","title":{"rendered":"Rififi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>My first time back in a movie theater, as a fully-vaccinated cinephile, was to watch <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0048021\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rififi<\/a> (1955) at the<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/musicboxtheatre.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Music Box Theater.<\/a> I loved the movie and get why the central safe-cracking \/ robbery scene has been referenced \/ ripped off since its inception. The look, the feel, the characters, the plot are absolutely gangbusters and, lord, they play even in a socially distanced theater.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-style-default\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"387\" height=\"515\" src=\"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/rififi.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-123\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/rififi.jpg 387w, https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/rififi-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 387px) 100vw, 387px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I knew Jules Dassin directed Night and the City, but hadn&#8217;t really thought: why is this movie in French? All of his previous movies were American studio pictures. (I guess his name just sounds French, so I didn&#8217;t think about it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Turns out Jules Dassin pulled off one of the more baller moves in movie-history. Blacklisted in Hollywood by HUAC turncoats, Connecticut-born Dassin moved to France. There he scraped together some pity money to direct a movie based on a book he didn&#8217;t like and, this is important, he most definitely did not speak French. Not only did he direct a stone-cold classic in a language he did not know, he CAST HIMSELF in the movie. He plays an Italian lothario who needs translation (natch). THEN he received Best Director at Cannes for Rififi. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another (sad) fact I found after watching Rififi was that Robert Hossein, the striking-looking and intense tough guy in the movie, <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eyeforfilm.co.uk\/feature\/2020-12-31-tributes-to-frances-populist-prince-robert-hossein-obituary-feature-story-by-richard-mowe\" target=\"_blank\">died of COVID<\/a> on Dec. 31, 2020, a day after his 93rd birthday. Turns out this was the perfect &#8220;first movie back.&#8221; Hossein&#8217;s performance lives on. We live on \u2014 the lightbulb-stars twinkling in the Music Box sky while Hossein&#8217;s image lights up the screen. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My first time back in a movie theater, as a fully-vaccinated cinephile, was to watch Rififi (1955) at the Music Box Theater. I loved the movie and get why the central safe-cracking \/ robbery scene has been referenced \/ ripped off since its inception. The look, the feel, the characters, the plot are absolutely gangbusters [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[72,71,73],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film-and-other-media","tag-jules-dassin","tag-rififi","tag-robert-hossein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}