Jules Dassin

Jules Dassin

Born: December 18, 1911
Died: March 31, 2008
in 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.

Movies for Jules Dassin...

Urok Francuzskogo
Title: Urok Francuzskogo
Character: Himself
Released: June 6, 2008
Type: Movie
A documentary about a relationships between USSR and France.
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Filmmakers in Action
Title: Filmmakers in Action
Character: Self
Released: September 15, 2006
Type: Movie
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.”)
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Buzz
Title: Buzz
Released: April 5, 2005
Type: Movie
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 ...
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The Long Haul of A.I. Bezzerides
Title: The Long Haul of A.I. Bezzerides
Character: Narrator
Released: January 1, 2005
Type: Movie
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."
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Balkan Landscapes: The Gaze of Theo Angelopoulos
Title: Balkan Landscapes: The Gaze of Theo Angelopoulos
Character: Himself
Released: May 15, 1993
Type: Movie
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.”
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Title: Champs-Elysées
Character: Self
Released: January 16, 1982
Type: TV
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Title: Les Rendez-vous du dimanche
Character: Self
Released: January 12, 1975
Type: TV
A talk show presented by Michel Drucker
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Title: Le Grand Échiquier
Character: Self
Released: January 12, 1972
Type: TV
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Promise at Dawn
Title: Promise at Dawn
Character: Ivan Mosjukine (as Perlo Vita)
Released: November 25, 1970
Type: Movie
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.
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Title: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
Character: Self
Released: October 1, 1962
Type: TV
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under The Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992. It originally aired during late-night. For its first ten years, Carson's Tonight Show was based in New York City with occasional trips to Burbank, California; in May 1972, the show moved permanently to Burbank, California. In 2002, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was ranked #12 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.
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Phaedra
Title: Phaedra
Character: Christos (uncredited)
Released: May 25, 1962
Type: Movie
A retelling of the Greek myth of Phaedra. In modern Greece, Alexis's father, an extremely wealthy shipping magnate, is married to the younger, fiery Phaedra. When Alexis meets his stepmother, sparks fly and the two begin an affair. What will the Fates bring this family? Alexis's roadster and the music of Bach figure in the conclusion.
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Never on Sunday
Title: Never on Sunday
Character: Homer Thrace
Released: May 24, 1960
Type: Movie
An American scholar in Greece sets about improving the prostitute with whom he is infatuated.
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Title: Discorama
Character: Self
Released: February 4, 1959
Type: TV
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Title: Cinépanorama
Character: Self
Released: February 4, 1956
Type: TV
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Rififi
Title: Rififi
Character: Cesar le Milanais
Released: April 13, 1955
Type: Movie
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.
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Thieves' Highway
Title: Thieves' Highway
Character: Man in Freight Elevator (uncredited)
Released: September 20, 1949
Type: Movie
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.
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Theo Angelopoulos: A Lifework in Film
Title: Theo Angelopoulos: A Lifework in Film
Released: December 31, 1969
Type: Movie
Theo Angelopoulos: A Lifework in Film