French
gangster movies about mobs, molls, and ingenious but ill-fated heists enjoyed a
big vogue in Europe in the 1950s and early 1960s, especially after the success
of Jules Dassin’s stylish “Du Rififi chez Les Hommes†in 1955. Opening
here a year later in an edited, subtitled print as “Rififi,†Dassin’s picture
drew a small but appreciative audience of critics and foreign-film fans, and
became a perennial favorite in American art houses, repertory theaters, and
film schools.
This
was a rare example of a “policier,†as French audiences called them, gaining
any critical and commercial notice on these shores even remotely comparable to
their popularity abroad. Although the genre owed a clear debt to classic
American crime films, it fell victim here, like nearly every other cinema
import from abroad, to a homegrown bias against dubbed or subtitled foreign
films in that more insular era of American popular culture. The vast
demographic of moviegoers in small-town America tended to be wary of movies
that they had to read as well as watch, or those in which stilted dialogue came out of unfamiliar actors’
mouths in interchangeable voices that didn’t match the movements of their
lips. If you were a crime-movie
enthusiast, you already had plenty of domestic product to choose from, anyway,
thanks to a wave of violent, “fact-based†programmers like “The Bonnie Parker
Story†(1958) and “Al Capone†(1959) that U.S. studios released in the wake of
high ratings for TV’s “The Untouchables.â€
The
policiers that crossed the Atlantic, if they made it at all, were likely to be
relegated to marginal, second-run theaters, alongside nudies and exploitation
pictures. Newspaper ads and posters
played up the sexier, grittier aspects of the films as lurid entertainment “for adults only.†For example, the blurbs on the posters for
“Doulos, the Finger Man,†a subtitled 1964 edit of Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le
Doulos†(1963), proclaimed: “Raw, Savage, Shocking†-- “So ruthless, untamed
women would do anything for him . . . and did!†In these days of graphic
internet porn, what may have been “shocking†50 years ago now looks quaintly
tame. Actual nude scenes in the original
European prints, which were modest to begin with by today’s standards, were
trimmed out of the American versions in deference to anti-obscenity laws. The sensual content that remained would
hardly cause a stir in today’s climate, but it was provocative for its era,
when married couples on TV had to be shown sleeping in modest PJs in twin beds,
if they were shown in the bedroom at all.
The
advertising strategy of implied sex turned a quick buck for distributors who
had little chance of seeing the policiers accepted by mainstream
ticket-buyers. However, the films’
reputation suffered in the larger court of public opinion. Middlebrow critics snubbed them as sordid
trash, almost beneath their notice. The
New York Times’ Bosley Crowther, for example, dismissed the Melville film as
“talkative and tiresome,†and seemed personally offended by the “mean and
disagreeable†title character portrayed by Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Some
critics have questioned whether Le Breton was telling the truth about his gangland
connections, and suspect that he coined the term “rififi†himself. Dassin said he was disturbed by racist
implications in the word, since Le Breton asserted that it referred to the
violent characteristics of Parisian gangs made up of North African immigrants
from the Rif area of Morocco. Accordingly, in the film version of “Du Rififi chez Les Hommes,†Dassin
downplayed the ethnicity of his characters. Sort of a Mickey Spillane of France, Le Breton became a popular
celebrity after the success of “Du Rififi chez Les Hommes†and made a lot of
money writing about hoods and tough guys. Many of his novels were branded with “rififi†in their titles, but aside
from certain shared themes and plot elements, the books were unrelated to each
other.
Vicky also oversees a sideline counterfeiting business with her partner Marcel, played by the always dependable Robert Hossein, graduating to a lead role from his early screen credit as a secondary henchman in “Du Rififi chez Les Hommes.†Marcel conceives a plan to steal millions in francs from the Bank of Belgium -- using his brains and organizational skills, not a gun. Marcel gets a job on a construction crew making repairs on the roof of the bank building. He smuggles counterfeit bills onto the site, hidden inside cement bags, and plots to lower himself and a big sack of counterfeit into the vault area, get inside the vault itself, exchange the fake bills for real ones in a bank bag, and haul the loot up again onto the roof for the getaway. The switch has to take place at night, after the bank’s employees have gone home, and before an armored car arrives in the morning to pick up the money in a routine transfer. Two logistical challenges are met relatively easily: Vicky infiltrates a bank official’s desk and steals a key to the vault, and Marcel finds inside help to make sure the bag of phony bills gets loaded onto the armored car without arousing suspicion.
While Marcel and Vicky check off the preliminaries, other trouble arises as a rival mobster, Bug (Roger Hanin), makes a play to take over the Ration K. His mistress Yoko (Silvia Monfort), leading a gang of molls, invades the club to strongarm Vicky. As Yoko holds Vicky and the club’s female staff at gunpoint, Yoko’s girl gang begins to demolish the place. Vicky’s confidant Henri (Jean Gaven) gets the drop on Yoko, but Bug and his henchmen arrive and seize the upper hand in turn. Marcel brings in a gangland kingpin, the Marquis (George Rigaud), to broker a truce, but the simmering rivalry threatens the plans for the big robbery. Although Bug and Yoko don’t know anything about the heist, Vicky’s comings and goings to prep the robbery arouse their suspicions. If you’re familiar with “Du Rififi chez Les Hommes†and Melville’s films, you can imagine what happens next. The French policiers seemed to take an almost masochistic delight in downbeat endings. In their case, it seemed not so much a surrender to censors, as with the ‘30s movies in which James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, and Paul Muni had to pay for their crimes at the end, but an expression of ingrained French cynicism and fatalism that Zola and de Maupassant would have appreciated.
“Du Rififi Chez Les Femmes†was released in the U.S. by Continental Distributing Inc. in 1962 as “Riff Raff Girls,†on a double-feature (at least in some venues) with “Pickup in Rome†-- actually Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Eclisse.†“A violent, vicious world where crime does pay . . . where men have always been the rulers . . . here men’s lives are cheap, and women’s even cheaper,†the coming-attraction clip promised. “Riff Raff Girls†seems to have fallen into a black hole in terms of U.S. cable, Blu-ray, DVD, VHS, or streaming video from a recognized company. A Google search will turn up a couple of no-name web sites that promise a free download, but you’re a more trusting soul than I if you’re comfortable giving your internet address to a faceless vendor. A DVD of “Du Rififi Chez Les Femmes,†released in 2012 by L.C.J. Editions in France, contains a French-language print, with no subtitles or alternate English track. Interestingly, the trailer for “Riff Raff Girls†(you can find it on YouTube if you search far enough) includes a scene in Bug’s bedroom in which Yoko unfastens her bra, the camera shifts to Bug, and then returns to a medium shot of Monfort, topless from behind. The scene is missing from the L.C.J. disc, although presumably it preceded a later scene that is included. In that scene, Bug, out of bed in a robe, talks on the phone, while Yoko, bare shouldered, rolls over and sits up under the covers. The French DVD, then, may not be the complete version.
How about a fully restored, remastered Blu-ray of “Du Rififi Chez Les Femmes†in its original theatrical print, with fresh English subtitles, packaged with the classy flair of the Criterion Collection’s editions of the Melville policiers? As extras, a remastered copy of the American print, “Riff Raff Girls,†if there are significant differences between the French and U.S. versions; new interviews with the two lead actors still living, Tiller and Hossein; and a souvenir booklet. Like Vicky and Marcel in their scheme to break an impregnable bank, I can dream, can’t I?
(Note: the video below is from a 1990s USA Network show called "Reel Wild Cinema" which presented vintage clips from exploitation films. If you fast forward to 38:41, you'll see the aforementioned American trailer for "Riff Raff Girls".)