Jules Dassin

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Jules Dassin

Born Julius Dassin
December 18, 1911(1911-12-18)
Flag of the United States Middletown, Connecticut, United States
Died March 31, 2008 (aged 96)
Flag of Greece Athens, Greece
Spouse(s) Beatrice Launer (1933?-1962?)
Melina Mercouri (1966–1994)

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. 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. His 1960 film Never on Sunday earned the music Academy Award (Manos Hadjidakis, Ta Paidia tou Peiraia), and the Cannes Film Festival best actress award (Melina Mercouri).[1][2]

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.[1]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born in Middletown, Connecticut in 1911, Dassin earned a reputation as an innovative director and was one of America's hottest young filmmakers of the 1940s with films such as Brute Force (1947) and Naked City (1948).

But as an active Communist who never compromised on his beliefs, he was blacklisted by Hollywood after directors Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle named him to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951.

Just as Dassin was about to be brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee though, producer Darryl F. Zanuck assigned him the screenplay for Night and the City (1949), starring Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney, and sent him to London to begin production on the film, now considered a landmark of the film noir genre. In an interview accompanying The Criterion Collection DVD release, Dassin recalls that Zanuck warned him that this would be his final film for Hollywood, advising him to shoot the most expensive scenes first, so that the studio would be "on the hook," and allow him to complete it. After the film's release, European producers were told that their films would not be allowed to be released in the United States if Dassin was involved in their production.

After the release of Night and the City, it would be five years before another film directed by Dassin would be released. Although Dassin directed Bette Davis in the 1952 Broadway musical revue Two's Company, he moved on to France, and took one film job largely because he needed work. The resulting film, the French language noir classic Rififi, opened to rave reviews and box-office success, famously regarded by the influential French film critic and later director François Truffaut as the "best noir he had ever seen". The film's legendary 32-minute 'heist sequence' without dialogue or music, not present in the source novel (by Auguste Le Breton), was an invention of the director and has since been imitated on countless occasions. The safe-cracking scene was so detailed that Paris police are rumoured to have briefly banned the movie for fear it be too instructive to would-be criminals.

Dassin's first movie in Greece was He Who Must Die (Celui Qui Doit Mourir, 1957), based on Christ Recrucified by the renowned Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis. But he would soon have cause to return to the country for good.

In 1960, Dassin made Never on Sunday (Pote tin Kyriaki) a story about an American in Greece trying to save a kind-hearted prostitute. The film won an Oscar for Best Song for composer Manos Hadjidakis, and is considered one of the finest movies ever made in Greece. Dassin himself was nominated for Best Director and Best Script, although in the end he never won an Oscar. More importantly for Dassin however, the film starred Melina Mercouri, one of Greece's most adored actresses at the time. The film earned Dassin Academy Award nominations for Best Director and the Best Original Screenplay. With Mercouri, Dassin was also responsible for its Broadway musical adaptation, Illya Darling, in 1967. Two years after another heist movie Topkapi (1964), which won Peter Ustinov an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, Dassin married Mercouri, who also starred in the film.

Merkouri and Dassin never hid their radical politics. Both were active in helping organise Greek resistance among expatriate politicians and artists in Paris against the right-wing junta that ruled Greece between 1967 and 1974. In 1978, the Cannes Film Festival awarded him a Golden Palm for A Dream of Passion, one of his last films.

After Mercouri retired from film-making she entered politics, rising to become the country's culture minister in the 1980s. She made the return of the Parthenon Marbles, removed from Greece in the 19th century and now in the British Museum, a lifelong quest. Dassin joined her campaign and eventually headed a foundation bearing her name established to secure the marbles' restitution to Greece. Mercouri died in 1994. Three years later, the Greek state awarded Dassin honourary citizenship for his efforts in their joint campaign.

[edit] Children

Jules Dassin had three children from his marriage to Beatrice Launer: Joe Dassin (1938–1980), a popular French singer in the 1970s who died from a heart attack, and two daughters, songwriter Richelle Dassin, Rickie (*1940) and actress Julie Dassin (*1944). Melina Mercouri and Dassin had no children together. In later years, Dassin retained an interest in politics despite advanced age and failing health.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b (Greek) Skai News, Απεβίωσε ο Ζυλ Ντασέν (Jules Dassin died), English (machine translation) Retrieved on 2008-04-01.
  2. ^ Internet Movie Database, Pote tin Kyriaki (1960), Retrieved on 2008-04-01.

[edit] External links


v • d • e
The films of Jules Dassin
1940s
1950s
1960s
Never on Sunday • Phaedra • Topkapi • 10:30 P.M. Summer • Hamilchama al hashalom • Up Tight!
1970s
1980s
Persondata
NAME Dassin, Jules
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dassin, Julius
SHORT DESCRIPTION Film director
DATE OF BIRTH 1911-12-18
PLACE OF BIRTH Middletown, Connecticut, United States
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH