The French have never impressed American tourists for their sense of active justice. Americans, when they think of France, most always think of Pigalle and champagne at 6000 francs, and they all know that there's no justice in that.

Down the hill and around the corner from Pigalle, however, is the Place Vendome. Rififi, a superb little French gangster film, proves that the Place Vendome really isn't much different from Madison Avenue. It's just as hard to rob a jewelry store at the Place Vendome as it is on Madison Avenue, and you have to wear a clean white shirt and pressed trousers to do it. And you get caught, too, for all your trouble.

Diabolique was rather convincing in its assertion that the French can be grotesque. Now we learn that they can be brutal and still be characteristically merry about it. The only shocking thing about Rififi is that the French carry this justice nonsense--to the point of quoting Proverbs in a prologue--as far as they do.

The story concerns a desperate robbery of Mappin & Webb, purveyors of glittering adornment to fastidious Parisians--and Montrealers and New Yorkers, too. Mappin & Webb shrewdly have taken the precaution of outfitting their Place Vendome premises with an alarm system, and it takes considerable ingenuity by Tony, Joe and Mario (who has been flown in from Milan for the occasion) to outwit the clever device. But they do, and they have some hot sparklers on their hands. Also a woman in Pigalle.

Technically, Rififi is a masterpiece. It's no real think piece, and when men get shot with bullets like alley cats get shot with peas, nobody is offended. Director Jules Dassin has used every effect of camera and angle, and he never slows down the pace. While it's hard to believe that a fire-extinguisher could ever put Mappin & Webb out of commission--as it does--most gangster films aren't wholly believable, anyway. For instance, when the stopped-up bell starts to ring almost inaudibly, why isn't the Arrondissement's gendarmerie roused by closed wire to action? Well, we don't know, or care.