Servais's Tony is cold as a corpse, part desiccated Jean Gabin, part deadpan Count Dracula. Too tough to check his hat when he descends into the hell of L'Age D'Or to find his old flame Mado (Marie Sabouret), Tony discovers that she has taken up with the joint's sinister owner (played, in keeping with the movie's internationalist subtext by a Romanian emigre, Marcel Lupovici). He establishes himself as the apache dancer's apache dancer when he collects Mado mid-assignation and, in the movie's most shocking scene, takes her back to his fleabag, where he orders her to strip, starting with her jewels, then beats her up and tosses her out - keeping the rocks but not the mink, which her hurls contemptuously after her down the stairs.
J. Hoberman
(on
Rififi 1955)
Criterion.com
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