Hellenic Forums Omogenia - YASOU - Hellenism: Jules Dassin 1911

Jules Dassin, born Julius Dassin (December 18, 1911 - March 31, 2008) was an American film director. He was a subject of the Hollywood blacklist, 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, but became better known for his noir films Brute Force, The Naked City, and Thieves' Highway in the 1940s.

Unfortunately, the late 1940s were difficult times for anyone with even the slightest leftist political leanings. After being identified as a communist by director Ed Dmytryk during a House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearing, Dassin found himself completely shut out by Hollywood. The last 1950s film which Dassin directed for a major studio was 20th Century-Fox's Night and the City, which was shot in London. Then he moved to France, where he helmed one of the most influential "crime caper" movies ever made, Riffifi (1954). So successful was this melodrama that it spawned numerous rip-offs (Riffifi in Tokyo was one of the most blatant) and parodies, including Dassin's own Topkapi (1964). Operating in Greece by 1959, Dassin directed his second wife Melina Mercouri in Never On Sunday (1960), a robust comedy about a joyous prostitute; Mercouri's performance was superb enough for viewers to forgive Dassin's own lackluster performance as a stuffy American moralist. Permitted back in the U.S.-studio system in the mid-1960s, Dassin directed Uptight (1968), a black-oriented remake of The Informer which proved beyond doubt that Dassin's alleged "communistic" tendencies were just a bit old hat. Not many of Jules Dassin's later, more personal films (notably an indictment of the Greek junta leaders, The Rehearsal [1974]) were seen in America, but the director's reputation, so idiotically maligned in the early 1950s, had been completely restored so far as Hollywood was concerned--even though the man himself chose to shun the U.S. for self-imposed Swiss exile. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.

Family
daughter:Julie Dassin (mother, Beatrice Launer)
son:Joey Dassin (mother, Beatrice Launer)
son:Rickey Dassin (mother, Beatrice Launer)
wife:Beatrice Launer (married in 1933; divorced in 1962)
wife:Melina Mercouri (born c. 1923; Greek; together from 1959; married from 1966 until her death on March 6, 1994)

Awards

Special New York Film Critics Circle Citation 2000
Golden Globe Samuel Goldwyn Award "Never On Sunday" 1960
Cannes Film Festival Country Selection Award: France "He Who Must Die" 1957
Cannes Film Festival Direction Award "Rififi" 1955

Milestones

1942 Feature directing debut, "Nazi Agent/Salute to Courage"
1941 Directed first short film, "The Tell-Tale Heart"
1940 First film as assistant director
1936 First role on New York stage (Yiddish Theater)
Directed first stage play, "The Medicine Show

Jules Dassin directed the following films:
The Tell-Tale Heart (1941)
Nazi Agent (1942)
The Affairs of Martha (1942)
Reunion in France (1942)
Young Ideas (1943)
The Canterville Ghost (1944)
Two Smart People (1946)
A Letter for Evie (1946)
Brute Force (1947)
The Naked City (1948)
Thieves' Highway (1949)
Night and the City (1950)
Du rififi chez les hommes (1955)
Celui qui doit mourir (1957)
La Legge (1959)
Pote tin Kyriaki (1960)
Phaedra (1962)
Topkapi (1964)
10:30 P.M. Summer (1966)
Hamilchama al hashalom (1968)
Up Tight! (1968)
Promise at Dawn (1970)
The Rehearsal (1974)
A Dream of Passion (1978)
Circle of Two (1980)

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