Part 2 of our Noir, noir, noir! mini-season featured the elegant heist drama, Rififi. Subscribing to a common misconception, I assumed that director Jules Dassin was a French import who had made his way to these shores after becoming known in Europe for his flair in the genre. Au contraire!  Dassin was in fact born in Connecticut to Russian-Jewish parents, and after having been a member of the communist party in for several years during the thirties, was blacklisted in Hollywood during the McCarthy era witch-hunt. The successful director was forced to flee Tinsel Town. He moved to France, where he made Rififi – his only French language movie (thanks for the research, Chris).

Rififi remains a mesmerizing experience, and our projector delivered the goods: neutral tones and deep, dark blacks (good black is essential for a classic noir!). If you’ve been with us for a while, you may remember our short feature, Miracle at Movienight, which introduced a new projector to the MovieNight family almost exactly three years ago (time does fly!). The replacement marked a great improvement in quality over its predecessor. You could actually see the film grain in a quality transfer! Unfortunately, it seemed unable to produce black and white without green and pink in it. (My dissatisfaction with the projector was born during a viewing of another amazing noir, Out of the Past.) The folks at Panasonic tired hard to help me out, but I’m fairly certain they associated my quest for perfection with some sort of mental illnes. They did replace the lamp eventually, but that didn’t really have much effect on the problem. Three years and nineteen hundred lamp hours later, it seems to be working just fine… or has someone just become a bit less fussy?

More about this film on IMDb