To call director Jules Dassin a survivor is something of an understatement.
Now 92 and a longtime resident of Athens, Dassin is the only big blacklisted Hollywood director who's still alive. Most of his Hollywood friends "have checked out and gone," he says, but he's hoping to see the few who are left during his first trip to Los Angeles in more than a decade. Dassin is enduring the long flight from Greece to make an appearance at Saturday's screening of his classic 1955 French caper film, "Rififi," at LACMA.
"Rififi" is one of the crown jewels in LACMA's "Written and Directed by Jules Dassin" retrospective, which kicks off Friday with a double bill of the great films noir 1947's "Brute Force" and 1949's "Thieves' Highway." Other highlights include his 1964 caper comedy "Topkapi," starring his late wife Melina Mercouri and featuring the late Peter Ustinov in his second Oscar-winning role, and the 1960 comedy "Never on Sunday," for which Dassin received an Oscar nomination for best director and Mercouri one for best actress. Reached over the phone in Athens, Dassin was funny -- "I am the oldest man in Greece" -- frank and forthright.
Dassin first went to Italy when he fled the U.S. in 1952 after director Edward Dmytryk named him as a communist during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. But his stay was short-lived. "They called me an 'undesirable alien,' " he says matter-of-factly. "That was my reputation."
He was still "undesirable" at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. Though he took home a best director award for "Rififi," no one wanted to be seen with him there because of his blacklist status. The only American celebrity who dared to talk with him at Cannes was Gene Kelly -- "dear Gene," Dassin says fondly.
Everyone else, he says, "looked down at their toes as if a bug was crawling somewhere, or they would hide their faces." He remembers going down a receiving line filled with Hollywood stars at a party at Cannes. "They all had their glasses in their hands because they were drinking something. The moment they saw me, all of their glasses were in front of their faces. It was tough. Tough."
Though Dassin's early films at MGM were lightweight and generally forgettable, he hit his stride in the late 1940s with gritty, uncompromising crime dramas and films noir that were often shot on location.
