Coming on the heels of our Jean-Pierre Melville Essentials from last week, we’re dedicating this installment of the series to another master of noir who’s often relegated to the sidelines on big-name director lists. Despite how his name might look on paper, Jules Dassin was born in Middletown, Connecticut to Russian Jewish parents (and for the record, his name is pronounced ‘Jewels DASS-in’). After a short acting stint with a Yiddish troupe, he turned his attention to directing. With a few MGM pictures under his belt before WWII, it wasn’t until the late ’40s that Dassin was recognized as one of the foremost talents of the era. But his leftist political leanings surfaced during the House of Un-American Activities Committee hearings, and he was among the many American filmmakers blacklisted from Hollywood.
Dassin was thus forced to move to Europe, and after a short period of unemployment, he regained his status as a furiously creative director. Not only did he shoot his films on location, but he was something of a cinematic philosopher, showcasing a knack for uncovering human nature through a variety of occupational hazards. Whether it’s the sun-bleached San Francisco of “Thieves’ Highway,” the seaports of “Never On Sunday” and “The Law,” or the European concrete jungles in “Rififi” and “Topkapi,” his environments are vital components in his stories and are wildly emblematic of his characters’ perils.
Celebrating the new restoration of his meditative magnum opus “Rififi” (which begins its week-long run at the Film Forum this Wednesday), we run down the very best films of this formidable master.
“Brute Force” (1947)
By the late ’40s, Dassin had already directed the likes of John Wayne and Joan Crawford (“Reunion In France“), Charles Laughton (“The Canterville Ghost“) and Lucille Ball (“Two Smart People“) but it wasn’t until this, his eighth feature, that he started to transition from good actor’s director to great director, period. “Not cleverness, not imagination. Just force. Brute force,” quips Art Smith‘s alcoholic Dr. Walters, “Force does make leaders. But.. it also destroys them.” For all his drinking, Walters is the most sober character in the prison in the film, whereas eager-to-escape convicts like Collins (Burt Lancaster, in the second role of his career), Spencer (John Hoyt) and Gallagher (Charles Bickford), as well as the passively-psychotic guard Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn) slowly lose their grip on reality either through haste or hubris. The script is one of Richard Brooks‘ earliest efforts, an archaically unambiguous effort, but thanks to Dassin’s deft perception with actors, every single character is almost instantly engaging. The noir-ish tone of this early classic prison drama is accentuated by William H. Daniels‘ enveloping black-and-white photography, the off-beat structure of charming flashbacks, and the prisoners’ women “on the outside” (curiously credited as such in the opening), and Calypso (Sir Lancelot), a fellow inmate who comically croons most everything he says in soothing song form. With “Brute Force,” Dassin, a master of location-direction, creates plenty of breathing space in one of his most claustrophobic environments through careful camera movement and ingenious framing, setting a high bar for the plethora of prison escape films to come. As it successfully delves into the baser instincts of men from all sides, imprisoned either by their thirst for power or their unwillingness to give up, few films can compare.
