DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
While the AFI has the corner on the film noir market this week, the one thing the Institute’s otherwise fantastic festival is missing is some good foreign noir. For those looking for a little international noir flavor, the National Gallery has just the thing this weekend, with a screening of one of the best heist movies ever made. The film, about a team of crooks trying to pull off a complex job while dealing with the usual personal distractions of trying to manage a family and a life of crime, was highly influential on the budding French New Wave movement. And its director, Jules Dassin, was an American expatriate who, in what seems to be a running theme through a lot of classic film screenings this year, was a victim of the HUAC in the 50s.
The film’s most memorable characteristic is the heist itself, a half hour sequence presented in complete silence, without dialogue or soundtrack. It’s a masterpiece of constantly heightening tension, as well as a detailed how-to on the step-by-step commission of a crime. But if the heist itself was all Rififi had going for it, it would probably be little more than a footnote. The screenplay, by Auguste Le Breton from his own novel, is a beautiful piece of nuanced pulp fiction that perfectly straddles the line between high art and crowd-pleaser. Jean Servais, whose drawn and downtrodden face seems built for the tragic noir hero, turns in a brilliant performance as well.
View the trailer.
Sunday at 4:30 p.m. at the National Gallery. Free.
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FilmFest DC doesn’t rest on its laurels during its off season. They’re sponsoring, along with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Arabian Sights Film Festival, which is in its 13th year. The 2008 program features 13 films from eight Arabian countries, as well as U.S. films from Arab and Arab-American filmmakers, including D.C.-based filmmaker Bassam Haddad. His film, The Other Threat is a documentary examining prejudices against Muslim immigrants in Europe. The festival opens tomorrow night with the Syrian film 33 Days, another doc, this one about life in Lebanon during Israel’s 2006 bombing of Beirut.
Tonight through Nov. 2, with screenings at E Street and the Goethe-Institut. See the schedule for a full list of films.
