RIFFIFI
1955
Directed by Jules Dassin
Ms. Hen watched RIFFIFI recently and she immediately had
déjà vu of another jewel heist film she had seen. After she watched it, she
scoured the internet and discovered the other film was LE CERCLE ROUGUE, or THE
RED CIRCLE from 1970.
In RIFFIFI, Tony, an ex-con gets out of jail and meets up
with some old friends and they decide to rob a jewelry store. What ensues is
fighting, a kidnapping and murder. The film is set in Paris in black and white,
and the streets glisten with rain. France loves chickens and Ms. Hen loves
Paris, so she loved watching the street scenes.
Ms. Hen’s favorite line from RIFFIFI was when Tony says to
the guys about robbing the store, “For me, the rocks in the window are chicken
feed.” He is referring to the original plan to smash the windows and rob the
jewels that way. He wants to break into the shop and get a bigger score.
In the beginning, Tony meets up with his old main squeeze, Moda,
at a club where she found a new man. He takes her back to his place, makes her
take off her diamonds and pearls, and her fur coat. He makes her take off her
dress and then he beats her with his belt. Tony tries to get back together with
her at the end and she turns him down. Ms. Hen admired this, because she
is a feminist hen. If a man beats a woman with a belt, there’s no way she
should take him back.
Riffifi means trouble, and the film is all about trouble.
The ending is much better than LE CERCLE ROUGUE because it is more about
passion than about greed. The anti-heroes don’t always win in the end, but
that’s more like life than the Hollywood ending.
Ms. Hen prefers foreign films, and she doesn’t like
Hollywood endings because they’re phony and saccharine. Real life isn’t always
happy and when a film shows you the real world, Ms. Hen feels good about the
way her life meanders along, boring, stuck in a chicken coop, laying eggs and
waiting for something more interesting to happen.
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