This weekend TCM showed Jules Dassin’s masterful ‘Rififi’ (1955) and I began a deep-ish dive into the enigmatic man behind the name. For years he was thought by many to be French–he did, after all, direct the premiere French noir crime-drama of the 1950s. But Dassin, in fact, was an east-coast guy, born in Middletown, Connecticut. and raised in the Bronx. After stage and radio work in the 30s (he had something to do at some point with Orson Welles but at that time who didn’t?) he wound up in Hollywood, directing precociously for MGM in his late twenties,  eventually partnering with Mark Hellinger on several seminal noirs of the late forties–‘The Naked City’, ‘Thieves Highway’ and the haunting and strange ‘Night And The City’ are all well worth rewatching. Dassin’s directing can be best described as meticulous–there are no banal choices or journeyman-like scenes. Every detail is clearly articulated, every shot carefully and lovingly framed.

And then he was blacklisted. The move to France resulted in ‘Rififi’ which was shot on very low-budget, and the film gave him a whole new career as a symbol of the French filmmaking world. In fact, he sort of became French–the film was a big international hit and America embraced the new French auteur who five years earlier they’d shown the door. He seems not to have pushed back on this and instead was happy to morph into his new role. Who could blame him? Better to be an auteur in Paris than a Commie in Hollywood (or Mexico, which is where many blacklisted writers and directors wound up for some reason). To make matters even more confusing, Dassin fell in love with Greek siren Melina Mercouri, wound up marrying her and made his biggest hit with her, ‘Never On Sunday’ (1966). He even co-starred in it–how’s that for a chutzpah? (Or perhaps I should find the French or Greek word for that appropriately Jewish description.) As a result of the success of this very Greek story starring a very Greek dame who Dassin married, he now became a Greek filmmaker. The strange thing is that photos of him make him seem very much a Frenchman or a Greek. I certainly don’t see any trace of Middletown, Connecticut in him. Dassin died at the age of 96; he was survived by his two daughters and his grandchildren. Upon his death, the Greek prime minister Costas Karamanlis released a statement: “Greece mourns the loss of a rare human being, a significant artist and true friend. His passion, his relentless creative energy, his fighting spirit and his nobility will remain unforgettable.” So apparently he fooled the prime minister, just as he fooled a generation of admirers who went around pronouing his name in a French accent. Above is Dassin discussing the blacklist for a few moments. No indication of when this was shot but it looks to me that he’s in his 70s or 80s and as French and Greek as ever…until you hear the very old-school New York intellectual accent.