Rififi (1955)

The heist-movie genre is one of my favorite genres, so it seemed high time that I finally go and visit the progenitor of damn near every single film in that subcategory. And it's a real winner, a stark noir-based tale that only gets better the longer it goes. The central heist is justifiably famous (for both its intricacy and the fact that it takes place in almost absolute silence), but my favorite bits are during the redemptive (and very, very French) closing scenes. If all movies were this solid, I'd never leave the house. It's more evidence for my growing suspicion that terrible books make the best movies, too -- director Jules Dassin has said that the source novel was one of the ugliest piece of garbage he'd ever read, and he almost passed on making the film because of it.

Grade: A