Jules Dassin Pics

Jules

Dassin

18 December 1911

Sagittarius

Male

Middletown, Connecticut, USA

31 March 2008

Athens, Greece

Rififi (1955)

American

complications from `flu

White

Julius "Jules" Dassin (December 18, 1911 – March 31, 2008), was an American film director. He was a subject of the Hollywood blacklist in the McCarthy era, and subsequently moved to France where he revived his career.

Jules Dassin (December 18, 1911 – March 31, 2008), born Julius Dassin, was an American film director. He was a subject of the Hollywood blacklist in the McCarthy era, and subsequently moved to France where he revived his career. One of eight children of a Russian-Jewish barber in Middletown, Connecticut, Dassin started as a Yiddish actor with the ARTEF (Yiddish Proletarian Theater) company in New York. He collaborated on a film with Jack Skurnick that was incomplete because of Skurnick`s early death. Dassin quickly became better known for his noir films Brute Force, The Naked City, and Thieves` Highway in the 1940s, which helped him to become "one of the leading American filmmakers of the postwar era." Dassin`s most influential film was Rififi, an early work in the "heist film" genre. It inspired later heist films, such as Ocean`s Eleven and Mission: Impossible. 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. [2] Dassin was blacklisted in Hollywood during the production of Night and the City in 1950. He was not allowed on the studio property to edit or oversee the musical score for the film. He had trouble even finding work abroad, as U.S. distribution companies would threaten not to distribute any European film with blacklisted participants. After 1950, Dassin was unable to work as a director until Rififi in 1955 (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 US leads to a common misconception that he is a Greek, or possibly French, director who made a few films in the US early in his career. He was considered a major Philhellene to the point of Greek officials describing him as a "first generation Greek". Along with his last wife, Melina Mercouri, he opposed the Greek military junta. A major supporter of the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens, for which he established the Melina Mercouri Institution in her memory, he missed the opening ceremony of the New Acropolis Museum by only a few months due to his death at the age of 96. Upon his death, the Greek prime minister, Costas Karamanlis, released a statement: "Greece mourns the loss of a rare human being, a significant artist and true friend. His passion, his relentless creative energy, his fighting spirit and his nobility will remain unforgettable."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Dassin

Julius Dassin

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Director, Writer, Actor/Actress

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