Celebrating the crimes and capers of Dassin

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.

He rebuilt his career in Europe after the blacklist, returning to America to make just one film: 1968’s “Uptight!,” a little-seen African American take on the 1935 John Ford classic “The Informer,” which will be included in the festival.

On-screen appearances

Dassin occasionally worked in front of the camera. He plays one of the thieves in “Rififi,” under the name of Perlo Vita.

“I cast a really wonderful Italian actor and then I called him to say we will start shooting next week and he said, ‘No, not me. I never got a contract.’ I had to put on the mustache and take his part.”

He also ended up playing the male lead, an American writer who falls for a vivacious Greek prostitute, in “Never on Sunday.” The budget was so low, he says, that the producers didn’t want him to pay the lead actor any more than $20,000. Dassin realized he couldn’t get anyone decent for that price, so he cast himself in the role opposite his future wife.

During his career, Dassin would also take a chance on actors and crew members who were having trouble finding jobs. Jean Servais, the lean, world-weary-looking actor who starred in “Rififi” and 1957’s “He Who Must Die,” was in a career slump before Dassin rediscovered him.

“He hadn’t worked for many years,” Dassin recalls. “He was a juvenile young man [in movies] and then had some problems. I saw him in a restaurant and I said, ‘Who is that?’ It was a place where actors went to eat. They said, ‘Jean Servais’ and I said, ‘That’s the guy.’ Just the way he looked.”

“The Naked City,” from 1948, is Dassin’s landmark semi-documentary-style film noir. Shot on location in New York, it revolves around two detectives as they attempt to find the killer of a young woman.

One of the film’s greatest strengths is the stark, evocative, black-and-white cinematography of William Daniels, who went on to win an Academy Award.

Dassin had to fight to hire Daniels, who had made a name for himself in the 1930s photographing Greta Garbo movies. “I remember saying to the producer, ‘I want him.’ He said, ‘You are mad. You can’t trust him. He’s a drunk.’ I said to myself, ‘I am going to find him because I had worked with him on a film one day at MGM and he was wonderful.’

“So I went and saw him and I said, ‘Just tell me, is there any reason why we can’t make a film together?’ It was the longest pause I have ever lived through and he said, ‘No, there is not.’ He didn’t ever have a drink after that.”

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‘Written and Directed by Jules Dassin’

When: Friday to May 1

Where: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Leo S. Bing Theater, 5905 Wilshire Blvd.

Price: $8 for general admission; $6 for museum and AFI members, seniors and students with valid I.D.

Contact: (323) 857-6010 or go to www.lacma.org

Schedule:

Friday: “Brute Force” and “Thieves’ Highway,” 7:30 p.m.

Saturday: “Rififi,” 7:30 p.m.; Dassin will appear at the screening

April 23: “The Naked City” and “Night and the City,” 7:30 p.m.

April 24: “Topkapi,” 7:30 p.m.; “Summer,” 10:30 p.m.

April 30: “Never on Sunday” and “Phaedra,” 7:30 p.m.

May 1: “He Who Must Die” and “Up Tight!,” 7:30 p.m.