Jules Dassin

Directing

Jules Dassin

Born 1911-12-18 · Middletown, Connecticut, USA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Julius "Jules" Dassin (December 18, 1911 – March 31, 2008) was an American film director, producer, writer and actor. He was a subject of the Hollywood blacklist in the McCarthy era, and subsequently moved to France, where he revived his career. Dassin quickly became better known for his noir films Brute Force (1947), The Naked City (1948), and Thieves' Highway (1949), which helped him to become "one of the leading American filmmakers of the postwar era." Dassin's most influential film was Rififi (1955), an early work in the "heist film" genre. It inspired later heist films, such as Ocean's Eleven (1960). Another piece it inspired was Dassin's own heist film Topkapi, filmed in France and Istanbul, Turkey with Melina Mercouri and Oscar winner Peter Ustinov. Dassin said Darryl F. Zanuck in 1948 called him into his office to inform him he would be blacklisted, but he still had enough time to make a movie for Fox. Dassin was blacklisted in Hollywood during the production of Night and the City (1950). He was not allowed on the studio property to edit or oversee the musical score for the film. He also had trouble finding work abroad, as U.S. distribution companies blacklisted the U.S. distribution of any European film associated with artists blacklisted in Hollywood. In 1952, after Dassin had been out of work for two years, actress Bette Davis hired him to direct her in the Broadway revue Two's Company. The show closed early, however, and Dassin left for Europe. Dassin did not work as a film director again until Rififi in 1954 (a French production). Most of Dassin's films in the decades following the blacklist are European productions. His prolific later career in Europe and the affiliation with Greece through his second wife, combined with a common pronunciation of his surname as "Da-SAN" in Europe, as opposed to "DASS-in" in the United States leads to a common misconception that he was a European director.

Acting credits

Rififi poster
7.8

Out of prison after a five-year stretch, jewel thief Tony turns down a quick job his friend Jo offers him, until he discovers that his old girlfriend Mado has become the lover of local gangster Pierre Grutter during Tony's absence. Expanding a minor smash-and-grab into a full-scale jewel heist, Tony and his crew appear to get away clean, but their actions after the job is completed threaten the lives of everyone involved.

Rififi

1955

Filmmakers in Action poster
7.2

What is the state of cinema and what being a filmmaker means? What are the measures taken to protect authors' copyright? What is their legal status in different countries? (Sequel to “Filmmakers vs. Tycoons.”)

Filmmakers in Action

2006

Topkapi poster
6.5

Arthur Simon Simpson is a small-time crook biding his time in Greece. One of his potential victims turns out to be a gentleman thief planning to steal the emerald-encrusted dagger of the Mehmed II from Istanbul's Topkapi Museum.

Topkapi

1964

Thieves' Highway poster
7.3

Nick Garcos comes back from his tour of duty in World War II planning to settle down with his girlfriend, Polly Faber. He learns, however, that his father was recently beaten and burglarized by mob-connected trucker Mike Figlia, and Nick resolves to get even. He partners with prostitute Rica, and together they go after Mike, all the while getting pulled further into the local crime underworld.

Thieves' Highway

1949

Phaedra poster
5.7

A modern retelling of the Greek myth of Phaedra. The young and fiery second wife of an extremely wealthy shipping magnate meets her estranged stepson Alexis and sparks immediately fly. Their love seems doomed from the beginning when she convinces him to come to Paris to meet his father.

Phaedra

1962

Never on Sunday poster
6.9

An American scholar in Greece sets about improving the local prostitute with whom he is infatuated.

Never on Sunday

1960

Buzz poster
NR

A journey to places, where the overlooked Hollywood screenwriter Albert Isaac "Buzz" Bezzerides lived and worked, revealing the operation of Hollywood's production system in the 1940s, '50s, '60s and more ...

Buzz

2005

No artwork available
NR

A documentary about a relationships between USSR and France.

Urok Francuzskogo

2008

Promise at Dawn poster
5.5

A single mother raises her son in impossible circumstances first in Leningrad, then Krakow, and then France, and is over-ambitious about him but never gives in.

Promise at Dawn

1970

The Hollywood Blacklist: The Survivors Tell Their Stories poster
NR

Featuring previously unseen footage from an early-1980s Los Angeles party honouring the blacklistees. (Note: this is an expanded version of footage previously used in "La dernière fête des blacklistés", 2025)

The Hollywood Blacklist: The Survivors Tell Their Stories

2026

No artwork available
NR

Theo Angelopoulos: A Lifework in Film

Theo Angelopoulos: A Lifework in Film

The Long Haul of A.I. Bezzerides poster
6.0

Filled with humor and defining experiences in both his own life and in the lives of some of his closest friends, William Faulkner and Robert Aldrich, as well as on his late wife, screenwriter Silvia Richards, Mr. Bezzerides offers colorful reflections as to why he and his typewriter unabashedly need to keep creating honest characters, worlds, and stories. Through recently discovered boxes of photographs, film clips, the haunting music by Fugazi, interviews (including Jules Dassin, Mickey Spillane and Barry Gifford) and testaments to his progressive creativity from other writers, Fay Lellios' straight-ahead documentary gives us a start in discovering this 97-year-old proletariat storyteller, and the meaning of his favorite phrase by Carl Jung, "There can be no birth of consciousness without pain."

The Long Haul of A.I. Bezzerides

2005

Elective Vicissitudes: The Radical Exiles of Jules Dassin poster
NR

In 1968, filmmaker Jules Dassin collaborated with Ruby Dee and civil rights activist Julian Mayfield on Uptight, a "politically radical" film noir about Black revolution, framed against the April 4 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Director, producer and co-writer Dassin, a blacklisted American exile, returns to his birth country after having gone into a second exile from his adopted country Greece, then makes a film that roiled the powers that be (or "powers that were") in the U.S. government. The material so upset the FBI that they closely monitored the production up until the eve of its premiere, recruiting crew members as moles. The irony is rich, as Uptight was a remake of John Ford's The Informer (1935) and dealt with a turncoat character who engineers the assassination of a revolutionary leader. How is Uptight both an outlier (or anomaly) as well as simultaneously integral to the career of Jules Dassin?

Elective Vicissitudes: The Radical Exiles of Jules Dassin

2023

Balkan Landscapes: The Gaze of Theo Angelopoulos poster
NR

Theo Angelopoulos recalls the defining moment in 1964 that led to him to live his entire life in Greece, and explores the concept of borders in his work - as the limits of existence, of life and death, of language and communication. “Narrowing down the borders narrows the communication, stretches the differences, magnifies oppositions, magnifies reasons for war, magnifies the refugees, magnifies the internal exile... In reality a civil war leaves behind wounds which cannot easily be healed and they revive, like ghosts, or like recurrent nightmares, during the long nights which have dogged Greek society for years.”

Balkan Landscapes: The Gaze of Theo Angelopoulos

1993

Behind the camera

Brute Force poster
7.3

Timeworn Joe Collins and his fellow inmates live under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey. Only Collins' dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey's chains?

Brute Force

1947

Rififi poster
7.8

Out of prison after a five-year stretch, jewel thief Tony turns down a quick job his friend Jo offers him, until he discovers that his old girlfriend Mado has become the lover of local gangster Pierre Grutter during Tony's absence. Expanding a minor smash-and-grab into a full-scale jewel heist, Tony and his crew appear to get away clean, but their actions after the job is completed threaten the lives of everyone involved.

Rififi

1955

Uptight poster
6.8

Set against the backdrop of a community mourning the recent MLK assassination, Black militants building up an arsenal of weapons in preparation for a race war are betrayed by one of their own.

Uptight

1968

Uptight poster
6.8

Set against the backdrop of a community mourning the recent MLK assassination, Black militants building up an arsenal of weapons in preparation for a race war are betrayed by one of their own.

Uptight

1968

Uptight poster
6.8

Set against the backdrop of a community mourning the recent MLK assassination, Black militants building up an arsenal of weapons in preparation for a race war are betrayed by one of their own.

Uptight

1968

The Naked City poster
7.2

After a former model is drowned in her bathtub, Detective James Halloran and Lieutenant Dan Muldoon attempt to piece together her murder.

The Naked City

1948

Night and the City poster
7.5

Londoner Harry Fabian is a second-rate con man looking for an angle. After years of putting up with Harry's schemes, his girlfriend, Mary, becomes fed up when he taps her for yet another loan.

Night and the City

1950

Reunion in France poster
6.5

Frenchwoman Michele de la Becque, an opponent of the Nazis in German-occupied Paris, hides a downed American flyer, Pat Talbot, and attempts to get him safely out of the country.

Reunion in France

1942

Topkapi poster
6.5

Arthur Simon Simpson is a small-time crook biding his time in Greece. One of his potential victims turns out to be a gentleman thief planning to steal the emerald-encrusted dagger of the Mehmed II from Istanbul's Topkapi Museum.

Topkapi

1964

Topkapi poster
6.5

Arthur Simon Simpson is a small-time crook biding his time in Greece. One of his potential victims turns out to be a gentleman thief planning to steal the emerald-encrusted dagger of the Mehmed II from Istanbul's Topkapi Museum.

Topkapi

1964

Thieves' Highway poster
7.3

Nick Garcos comes back from his tour of duty in World War II planning to settle down with his girlfriend, Polly Faber. He learns, however, that his father was recently beaten and burglarized by mob-connected trucker Mike Figlia, and Nick resolves to get even. He partners with prostitute Rica, and together they go after Mike, all the while getting pulled further into the local crime underworld.

Thieves' Highway

1949

He Who Must Die poster
6.2

1920s Greece is occupied by the Turks. A country in turmoil with entire villages uprooted. A small community conduct their annual Passion Play. The leading citizens, under auspices of the Patriarch, choose the actors: a stuttering shepherd as Jesus, the town butcher as Judas, the town prostitute as Mary Magdalene, and so on. As the story unfolds, the Passion becomes a reality.

He Who Must Die

1957

He Who Must Die poster
6.2

1920s Greece is occupied by the Turks. A country in turmoil with entire villages uprooted. A small community conduct their annual Passion Play. The leading citizens, under auspices of the Patriarch, choose the actors: a stuttering shepherd as Jesus, the town butcher as Judas, the town prostitute as Mary Magdalene, and so on. As the story unfolds, the Passion becomes a reality.

He Who Must Die

1957

Phaedra poster
5.7

A modern retelling of the Greek myth of Phaedra. The young and fiery second wife of an extremely wealthy shipping magnate meets her estranged stepson Alexis and sparks immediately fly. Their love seems doomed from the beginning when she convinces him to come to Paris to meet his father.

Phaedra

1962

Phaedra poster
5.7

A modern retelling of the Greek myth of Phaedra. The young and fiery second wife of an extremely wealthy shipping magnate meets her estranged stepson Alexis and sparks immediately fly. Their love seems doomed from the beginning when she convinces him to come to Paris to meet his father.

Phaedra

1962

Phaedra poster
5.7

A modern retelling of the Greek myth of Phaedra. The young and fiery second wife of an extremely wealthy shipping magnate meets her estranged stepson Alexis and sparks immediately fly. Their love seems doomed from the beginning when she convinces him to come to Paris to meet his father.

Phaedra

1962

The Canterville Ghost poster
6.9

The descendent of a ghost imprisoned for cowardice hopes to free the spirit by displaying courage when under duress.

The Canterville Ghost

1944

The Law poster
5.9

A gorgeous housekeeper turns the tables on the men in a small Mediterranean coastal town by using their own vicious drinking game.

The Law

1959

The Law poster
5.9

A gorgeous housekeeper turns the tables on the men in a small Mediterranean coastal town by using their own vicious drinking game.

The Law

1959

Never on Sunday poster
6.9

An American scholar in Greece sets about improving the local prostitute with whom he is infatuated.

Never on Sunday

1960

Never on Sunday poster
6.9

An American scholar in Greece sets about improving the local prostitute with whom he is infatuated.

Never on Sunday

1960

Never on Sunday poster
6.9

An American scholar in Greece sets about improving the local prostitute with whom he is infatuated.

Never on Sunday

1960

Circle of Two poster
4.8

In Toronto, 15-year-old aspirant writer Sarah Norton meets 60-year-old painter Ashley St. Clair in a cafeteria while hiding from her stalker boyfriend. Ashley hasn't painted for ten years. He agrees to read Sarah's poems. They start seeing each other at his studio and Sarah falls in love with him, but Ashley does not reciprocate her feelings.

Circle of Two

1981

The Affairs of Martha poster
6.6

Members of a well-to-do small community become worried when it is revealed that one of their maids is writing a telling exposé.

The Affairs of Martha

1942