RIP Jules Dassin

wow, i'll def. have to watch 'night and the city' tonight.

just had a long conversation about rififi with a friend yesterday. RIP.

!

RIP

"naked city" is incredible

i guess not so much !, dude was 96, but still.

this is ridiculous -- and Richard Widmark last week!

nonagenarians be dyin

this guy was great.

RIP

"I liked you, Macaroni"

dude had a knack for glamorizing the seediness of world-class cities. His late 40's-early 50's films soared, probably all among my all-time faves. The Naked City is a more definitive take on NYC then anything by Scorsese, Allen, Lee or the lot of 'em.

damn

also Never on Sunday, Topkapi, and 10:30 P.M. Summer have been inching up my netflix queue for months and i just want to watch them now.

Wow. Thank you thank you for "Riffifi" and "Naked City" ! Rest well.

another didn't know he was alive death. but he ruled. RIP>

How can the two greats responsible for my favorite movie ever die the same week!

suicide pact?

dan, don't jinx Googie Withers! (living at 91)

I've just seen what ppl have already mentioned (not Topkapi) plus Brute Force (evil Hume Cronyn, best prison riot film) and Thieves' Highway. Actually, nothing post-Rififi, is any of that good?

I think TCM shows his short of The Tell-Tale Heart on occasion (apparently it's on a Thin Man DVD?).

Topkapi is ok. Nothing near as special as the B&W stuff, though.

And yeah, RIP like a straw hat in a foley studio.

I remember liking Thieves Highway, would make a nice double feature with Wages of Fear.

RIP

from the Jeff Wells blog:

One of Dassin's more ardent admirers was Alexander Payne, who felt a kinship based on their common Greek heritage. Payne told me this afternoon that he recently lobbied for Dassin to be given a special honorary Oscar from the Academy, but it was no-go.

In view of the Academy having given a politically controversial honorary Oscar to Elia Kazan, who was despised in some corners for having named (or confirmed) names to HUAC, Payne feels "it would have been nice for the Academy to have acknowledged both sides of that very difficult coin -- a director who stayed, and another who was forced to leave."

When Kazan won the Oscar, there were some amazing articles from blacklisted writers, I can't remember if it was Dassin or Abraham Polonsky but it was really amazing.

with Rififi, Dassin somehow managed to step up his game once he was blacklisted. McCarthy managed to eat a dick.

well, Night and the City was his first exile movie, surely

it was bankrolled in Hollywood during huac, basically their parting gift to the commie bastard.

Last night I caught Dassin's "Theives Highway," a gritty hardboiled examination of the cutthroat world of er...fresh produce. The scenes of the competing freelance trucker guys racing to market and trying to put one over on each other (and occassionally their suppliers) are pretty ok, if nothing that's going to make you forget either version of "The Wages of Fear"/"Sorcerer", but the action once the protagonist gets to San Francisco and starts to try to avenge his father's crippling at the hands (several steps removed) of the biggest and worst apples and tomatoes kingpin in the city are great. Especially great is the femme fatale the kingpin sends after our boy - he tries to resist her considerable feminine wiles, and accurately notes "You look like chipped glass" but ends up falling for her anyway after she rips him off (and in turn gets ripped off herself) of the money he was going to use to marry his hometown sweetheart, who, it turns out wasn't actually interested in a broke ass truck driver who pals around with hookers after all. I could see watching this a few more times.

Naked City, first time. Held my attention, but honestly, I didn't think it was great. I found Mark Hellinger's narration interminable at the beginning and intrusive after that. Took me a while to adjust to Barry Fitzgerald, too--he's forever Going My Way and The Quiet Man for me--but I did eventually; his first interrogation of Howard Duff was good. Much more of a procedural than a noir. Almost Tom Pedi's first film, and that's neat. The last five minutes was very good. Famous last line. I'm not sure if I've seen Brute Force or not.

i was so disappointed we never got to hear that bad guy play the harmonica

detective reminded me of Santa Claus.

I think Coppola may have lifted a line word-for-word for Godfather II, either intentionally or something that was buried in the back of his head: "I'm not dumb, I'm smart." Fredo in Godfather II, the wrestler in Naked City. (Unless it's in Puzo's novel.)

TCM is airing his short adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart this coming Saturday. Haven't seen, and didn't even know it existed until today, but I'm curious.