Jules Dassin, rest in peace

Passing today was Jules Dassin, age 96, American expatriate director. It's hard to say what he is most famous for. He was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. He moved to Europe and made two of the great noirs of the era, Night and the City (with the recently passed Richard Widmark) and, most especially, the towering French-language Rififi, a mainstay of greatest films surveys. His name is something of a peculiarity to hardcore cineastes, but he should be known to a wider audience as one of the great American directors.