Keswick Film Festival

Synopsis

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Is this the greatest crime film ever made? Francois Truffaut thought so, and it was certainly one of the most influential, inspiring Kubrick, De Palma, Tarantino. Quintessentially film noir, made in France by American Jules Dassin (who went to Paris because he was victimised by the McCarthy anti-Communist witchhunt), Rififi is famous for its uniquely suspenseful heist scene, but it offers much more: Dassin believed in the human element, in everyday settings, insisting on simplicity and pace, reworking familiar situations to create something brutally effective, although the violence is much less overt than we generally encounter in the Twenty-first Century.