Rififi (1955)

Arguably the pinnacle of the heist genre, Jules Dassin’s wonderful French thriller is without doubt one of the most influential films of all time. Jean Servais is Tony, just out of prison after a five-year stretch for jewel theft, and is swiftly offered the chance of a way back into crime by his friend Jo (Carl Mohner). Initially turning the job down, Tony changes his mind when he finds his old girlfriend (Marie Sabouret) is now seeing local gangster Pierre, driving him to spearhead the burglary of an exclusive jewellery shop in the Rue de la Paix. Rififi is brilliantly written, superbly directed, and wonderfully acted; and is anchored by an astonishing central sequence when the heist takes place. Shot in near silence with almost no dialogue or music, the intricacy of the scene is almost unbearably tense; and it’s a huge credit to a film that is nearly seventy years old that it remains just as nail-biting today. Another sequence that sticks out is a musical number early on in the club run by Pierre; as a singer regales her audience with the song ‘Rififi’, we are shown each of the key players in the film throughout the number, and it acts perfectly as a piece that lays down the gauntlet for the rest of the film to play out. It’s not a film that you hear mentioned often, but Rififi is a masterpiece of the highest order, and its effect can be seen throughout heist films and thrillers of the following seventy odd years. 9.0/10