It's a classic crime story with the familiar trademarks of how to steal jewels intelligently, using techniques to avoid setting off the alarm, such as silence by the characters until such time the alarm is absolutely off and then drilling through the vault to acquire the jewels. Dassin,the director, also plays the safecracker, and was forced to move and work in France due to the Hollywood Communist blacklist in the ‘50, The robbery. Scene, without any dialog, lasts over 10 minutes! Can you imagine any director being able to pull that off today. If you don’t watch it you will denying yourself the pleasure of enjoying IMO perhaps the best caper film ever made.