(some plot spoilers, as the whole thing is a heist) clipping out a few beautiful scenes from Jule's Dassin's Noir Rififi. I know some like to segment off everything outside of America as not-Noir, or noir-adjacent or only noir-influenced, but watching this last night - it really is a masterpiece, not only of the heist genre (like Asphalt Jungle, 1950), but also in how it builds a true doomed Noir Universe, without simply "quoting" it. Much recommended. The question of what is Noir is interesting and complex (and I don't begrudge the boundaries others may want to put on it), but there is pretty good evidence that American Noir had French Poetic Realism influence (from Paris in the1930s), that came along with its emigree German directors and technicians, and because American Noir by the 1950s was itself "quoting" itself somewhat stylistically already (despite the genre not even being "discovered" or invented yet), this film reads as just straight up Film Noir. It sheds many of the Poetic Realism differences from Film Noir. It's powerful. Expertly crafted and performed. Has the femme fatales and the night club world, the villainous big boss, the doomed cadre of fellows who share the moral code of the streets, has detective themes, the tale of urban ruin or corruption. And, a great deal of the film just is beautifully constructed visually. Much of the film is organized around a heist, patiently unfolding, but its really like all great Noirs about the characters, in the halo of an aging criminal, his dignity amid a deadend world.

Also, the final scenes are spectacular, as the film shifts toward the coming French New Wave in style, beckoning towards the future, a new generation, both in terms of story telling, but at the level of cinema itself, making the film all the more special.  

Rififi (1955) - a truly beautiful Film Noir (French)