Filmmaker Jules Dassin in New York. Photo by Elisa Haber

"There are eight million stories in this city. This has been one of them," is the famous line from The Naked City, the archetypical movie about New York. Its director, Jules Dassin, made his reputation with that acclaimed docudrama shot on the streets of Manhattan, and certainly his story is one of the great New York tales.

When DGA Special Projects Officer, East Brian Rose introduced the 88-year old writer/director, who has lived in Athens, Greece, for more than 40 years, as "perhaps the most international of American film directors" at a special screening of the restored Rififi (1955) at the Directors Guild of America Theater in New York on July 6, it brought home the fact that Dassin's roots are American, but he is also notable in French and Greek film history. Dassin is an integral part of American film history because of such classics as Brute Force (1947), Thieves' Highway (1949), Night and the City (1950) and The Naked City (1948); of French cinema because of Rififi; and Greek film heritage because of Never on Sunday (1960) and He Who Must Die (1957).

The mean streets of East Harlem, New York, which shaped Dassin as well as Burt Lancaster and James Cagney, and imbue all of these movies, were "very tough but very rich and rewarding," he says. Though Rififi, which is being re-released by Rialto Pictures, was being shown, The Naked City was mentioned by several in the audience, and the linkage is no accident. Many of our impressions of both New York and Paris in the post-World War II period derive from those two movies.

Despite the enthusiastic applause, Dassin waved away requests to speak but held court afterward with well-wishers. After the screening, DGA Magazine asked him how it felt to be told that Rififi is as cutting edge as it was almost 50 years ago. "It feels good."

Dassin was a director of notable movies at MGM, Universal and 20th Century Fox before the HUAC hearings and the Hollywood blacklist caused his departure for Europe by 1950. Unlike Joseph Losey, Dassin could not secure European work because he was the special target of American labor forces led by Roy Breuer. Henri Berard, the French producer of Rififi (which is known in Europe as Du Rififi chez les hommes) offered Dassin, who had endured five years of unemployment, the direction of this poverty-row production. The desperate Dassin wrote the movie, based on a novel by Auguste le Breton, and cast it with unknowns and a faded star Jean Servais. He cast himself as Cesar, the dapper safecracker. It made stars of the unknowns, and revived the careers of Servais and Dassin. Dassin won the Best Director Award at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival, and ironically became reborn as a European director.

Rififi, which is French argot for gang trouble, stimulated emerging directors. Indeed, Rififi, whose heist sequence has been shamelessly imitated over the years, now appears to be a watershed film in technique, a link between classic Hollywood film noir and the French New Wave. The film caused an economic breakthrough for foreign films in America, but artistically it had more repercussions. What distinguishes Rififi from other caper films, even Dassin's comic Topkapi (1964), is a fatalism and existentialism which anticipated the French New Wave films of Godard, Truffaut and Chabrol. Dassin recalls when "two young men came to interview me. They were journalists. One was [Francois] Truffaut and the other was [Claude] Chabrol. They spoke kindly and helped the film. They wrote so flatteringly about it."

Rififi presages their New Wave films because of the shooting in the streets, natural light, offbeat casting and spontaneous, naturalistic acting and humor, such as the playful erotic touching by the lovesick crook Mario of his girlfriend's breast for good luck before the heist.

"It has been written that I was influenced by The Asphalt Jungle but the truth is that I saw The Asphalt Jungle many years after I made the picture," Dassin explained.

Though Dassin was a New York theater actor and director before he arrived in Hollywood in 1940, he had a dynamic visual sense and a documentary filmmaker's piercing focus, most notably in The Naked City with its American neorealism style.

"Look, any film I ever made of any city, including New York, was [made by] walking. You just walk. I never understood the extraordinary organization of how New York functions - how people are buried, how they are fed, the whole support of a city - until I made Naked City." 

His producer at Universal, legendary newspaperman Mark Hellinger, "protected directors," he says, "and fought off the studio." Rififi, which is most famous for its often-imitated half-hour silent detailed-burglary sequence, has long passages with no dialogue. Did he employ silent film technique and composition? "Yes. There are about 40 minutes [of the 118 minute length] that are silent." Was the sound synchronization budget a consideration? "No, that's just the way I shot it."

Throughout his career, Dassin, who co-wrote his scripts, worked closely with his cinematographers, costume designers, scriptwriters, art directors and set designers. Whoever questions the auteur in Dassin should consider the fact that he turned "Garbo's cameraman" William Daniels into a gritty cinematographer for The Naked City, for which Daniels was awarded an Oscar.

The blacklist was horrific for Dassin, but indirectly led him to the love of his life. When he received the award for Best Direction at the Cannes Film Festival of 1955 for Rififi, he met Melina Mercouri, who became his muse and his own personal Greek goddess. With Mercouri, he regained his spirit because of what he calls her joie de vivre. "She was fun-loving, alert and interesting, and really enjoyed life very much, and that was very attractive."

 -Kevin Lewis