What is Rififi / Topkapi about?

RIFIFI, 1955, 122 min. Dir. Jules Dassin. Back from the pen, tough guy Jean Servais rejoins his cronies and freshly imported safecracker César the Milanese (Dassin himself, billed as Perlo Vita) for a little jewel store smash-and-grab job -- but Servais wants the whole works! The central heist is an edge-of-your-seat 30-minute sequence without dialogue or music, so detailed that it provided a feasible blueprint for real-life pros. TOPKAPI, 1964, 119 min. Dir. Jules Dassin. Melina Mercouri and lover Maximilian Schell, backed by a hand-picked team, find their carefully laid plans to heist emeralds from the Topkapi museum in Istanbul laid low by the bumblings of hanger-on Peter Ustinov -- in an Oscar-winning performance (Supporting Actor) -- then decide to go ahead anyway. Pioneer of the heist genre Dassin keeps his tongue firmly in cheek but the suspense taut in this adaptation from intrigue titan Eric Ambler.

Rififi / Topkapi

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What is Rififi / Topkapi about?: RIFIFI, 1955, 122 min. Dir. Jules Dassin. Back from the pen, tough guy Jean Servais rejoins his cronies and freshly imported safecracker César the Milanese (Dassin himself, billed as Perlo Vita) for a little jewel store smash-and-grab job -- but Servais wants the whole works! The central heist is an edge-of-your-seat 30-minute sequence without dialogue or music, so detailed that it provided a feasible blueprint for real-life pros.

TOPKAPI, 1964, 119 min. Dir. Jules Dassin. Melina Mercouri and lover Maximilian Schell, backed by a hand-picked team, find their carefully laid plans to heist emeralds from the Topkapi museum in Istanbul laid low by the bumblings of hanger-on Peter Ustinov -- in an Oscar-winning performance (Supporting Actor) -- then decide to go ahead anyway. Pioneer of the heist genre Dassin keeps his tongue firmly in cheek but the suspense taut in this adaptation from intrigue titan Eric Ambler.