Jules Dassin on the Quiet Thrills of Rififi

The bravura centerpiece of Jules Dassin’s model heist thriller, Rififi, is the elaborately staged burglary itself—a nearly half-hour sequence without dialogue. With surgical precision, the film’s career criminals go about their business in silence—a brilliant directorial choice that leaves us breathless and guessing just exactly how they’re going to pull it off. In this excerpt from an interview recorded for the Criterion Collection in 2000, Dassin talks about that decision.