Hey folks, Harry here... Man, the world is knocking off some of my favorite old school talent. Richard Widmark... and now, JULES DASSIN. Last year, when I threw Half-Ass-A-Thon I screened Dassin's classic trippy as hell film TOPKAPI, which is being remade as the sequel to the THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR - and will never ever touch the brilliance of that original film.

Jules Dassin was a towering and formidable directing talent, right from the get go... If you check out his first directing outing, his brilliant 20 minute version of Edgar Allan Poe's THE TELL-TALE HEART (it's on the THIN MAN series dvds) - you'll find that Jules was a born director. Then with REUNION IN FRANCE and THE CANTERVILLE GHOST his style was buried a bit by the studio system... it wasn't until the electrifying BRUTE FORCE that the promise from THE TELL-TALE HEART short was realized in feature form. BRUTE FORCE is one of the greatest Noirs ever made. Lancaster's performance, the sultry Yvonne De Carlo - and even Hume Cronyn's Captain... all fantastic. Jules followed this with the possibly even more brilliant film THE NAKED CITY - which has... hands down one of the best openings & closings (below) of any film ever made. Here he began his brilliant experimentation within the Noir form - bringing a documentarian style that made a very "real" sensation to the whole affair - I would also say this is one of the most brilliant NEW YORK films ever made. Brilliant. This was followed by the nearly as brilliant THIEVES' HIGHWAY with Richard Conte and the brilliant Lee J Cobb. Then he directed Richard Widmark in one of his greatest films with NIGHT AND THE CITY. At this point Dassin was amongst the kings of the Noir genre - but in the early fifties - he was named a Communist by Edward Dmytrk, a fellow brilliant Noir man, and he was blacklisted and forced to work in France... at the most exciting moment in the history of cinema... and Jules Dassin's talent exploded.

The explosion resulted in RIFIFI - a stunning perfect crime gone wrong film that is simply one of the greatest movies ever made. After the genius of RIFIFI - Jules experimented in other genres... dabbling with straight Drama and even Sexploitation with HE WHO MUST DIE and THE LAW - and then Romantic Comedy with NEVER ON SUNDAY where he met his gorgeous wife, Melina Mercouri (who was nominated for an Oscar for her dazzling performance). Then with PHAEDRA, he reworked a Greek myth and got an amazing performance out of his wife and Anthony Perkins. After that was... my favorite Dassin film... TOPKAPI - a dazzling dream of a heist film. A nearly half-dreamt descent into psychedelic brilliance.

Jules Dassin lived an astonishing life and was a brilliant director. He spent 96 full years with us - and for 40 years he was incredibly productive and creative and flat out brilliant. He might not have produced a film in the final 28 years of his life, but his influence is felt in the works of Verhoeven, the Coens, Tarantino, Linklater, the Wachowskis and so many others. It was his time to move on - but if you haven't discovered his work... you should - here's some trailers, some openings and some closings for his brilliant films - and even a word or two from Jules himself...