Classe tous risques (1960)
Directed by Claude Sautet

Film Review

The director Claude Sautet is best remembered for the series of films - intimate and subtle explorations of the relationships between men and women - that represent the bulk of his creative output, beginning with Les Choses de la vie (1970) and concluding with Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud (1995).  Given the tremendous impact that these films have made, it is too easily forgotten that Sautet's first major commercial and critical success was in an altogether different register, namely the classic French polar.  Classe tous risques not only put Claude Sautet on the map (he had helmed one film prior to this, a limp comedy titled Bonjour sourire that he was right to disown), it also helped to establish one of French cinema's most enduring icons, Jean-Paul Belmondo, whilst also kick-starting the career of another French film legend, Lino Ventura.

With its solid casting, authentic writing and abundance of production flair, Classe tous risques stands apart from most French crime films of its time and fits effortlessly into the Nouvelle Vague era.  It is an inspired adaptation of a novel of the same title by José Giovanni, which had been published just a few years previously.  A former convicted criminal (who narrowly escaped death by execution just after the war), Giovanni had forged a new career as a crime writer with Le Trou, his account of a prison escape in which he was involved.  After Jacques Becker's adaptation of Le Trou had proven a success, Giovanni was soon busy writing the screenplay of his subsequent novel, Classe tous risques.  This second success led Giovanni to adapt several other of his novels and in next to no time he was one of French cinema's most prolific and respected screenwriters in the crime genre.

In all of his crime novels, José Giovanni drew heavily on his firsthand experience of the Parisian underworld (known locally as Le Milieu).  The central protagonist in Classe tous risques, Abel Davos, was closely modelled on a notorious gangster and Gestapo hitman Abel Danos (nicknamed le Mammouth), whom Giovanni had met whilst incarcerated at the Santé Prison, not long after the Liberation.  The book and the film totally ignore Danos's grubby dealings with the Gestapo and present him as a sympathetic world-weary hoodlum keen to put his criminal past behind him, in true film noir fashion.  Interestingly, one of Danos's criminal associates was the equally infamous Pierre Loutrel, who is better known as Pierrot le fou - the name that was attached to a character played by Belmondo in a later film by Jean-Luc Godard.

Claude Sautet was not such an unlikely choice of director for Classe tous risques as it now seems.  He had worked as an assistant on Georges Franju's eerily atmospheric Les Yeux sans visage (1959) and had demonstrated a natural flair for the hard-boiled crime thriller with Le Fauve est lâché (1959), on which he was employed as a screenwriter, with Lino Ventura in the lead role.  As in this latter film, Sautet took his inspiration more from American crime films of the 1950s than contemporary French films, and this shows itself in the film's crisp modernity and its relentless, often viscerally shocking, grittiness.  A large part of the film was shot on location (in Milan, Nice and Paris), using techniques that we now associate with the French New Wave.  A daylight heist scene near the start of the film was filmed in a busy Italian square with hidden cameras, so naturally the reaction of the surrounding crowds is one of genuine panic and concern.

Ghislain Cloquet's photography effectively combines the high contrast stylisation that we associate with classic American film noir with a more prosaic, near-documentary realism - and this gives the impression of a film that is both comfortingly familiar and frighteningly unpredictable, a dramatic collision of the banal and the fantastic.   At a time when the crime film in France had been virtually mined out and was becoming ripe for parody (often with Ventura grudgingly helping to send the genre up, as in Le Gorille vous salue bien), Classe tous risques gave it a fierce new lease of life.  The film was a hit with the public and the critics, attracting an audience of 1.7 million in France.  By contrast, Sautet's next attempt at a crime film, L'Arme à gauche (1965), was a dismal failure (despite the presence of Ventura in the lead role) and this led the director to give up the genre altogether.

For Lino Ventura, the opportunity to play a more rounded and believable character, as opposed to the wearyingly familiar gangster or action hero archetypes, was a godsend and effectively saved his career just as disillusionment was beginning to set in.  Giovanni's obvious sympathy for his subject (thankfully the author does not shy away from the abject brutality of his milieu) gives Ventura a far more fully developed and complex character to play with than usual, and it's hardly an accident that Classe tous risques shows the actor at his absolute best - devastatingly fragile in some scenes, utterly ruthless in others, convincing throughout as man who, whilst badly bruised and warped by his criminal dealings, still manages to retain some vestige of decency.  The tenderness that Ventura's character elicits in his gentle, down-to-earth scenes with his children makes a sharp and revealing counterpoint to what we see later on in the film, when he turns on his gangster associates and cold-bloodedly executes them.

Jean-Paul Belmondo was still a virtual unknown at the time he was cast in Classe tous risques.  It wasn't until the release of Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle in March 1960 (just a few weeks before Sautet's film was released) that he could rightly be called a star.  In fact, Sautet had to fight hard to secure Belmondo for the supporting role of Éric Stark, a likeable rookie hoodlum as yet unscarred by his underworld associations.  The producers wanted a more established actor (Laurent Terzieff or Alain Delon) for the part, and it was only after a long standoff which almost derailed by the project that Sautet finally won through, backed to the hilt by Ventura.  Sautet's faith in Belmondo was amply rewarded - the actor's casual juvenile charm and boyish innocence made the perfect complement to Ventura's aura of bruised and jaded introspection that reveals a man completely worn down by the grim reality of his profession.  Sautet and Giovanni both deserve credit for the authenticity and artistry they bring to the film, but ultimately it is the inspired Ventura-Belmondo pairing that makes it so compelling, poignant and memorable.  It's hardly a surprise that these two great actors should be called upon to reprise their arresting screen partnership a few years later - in Henri Verneuil's Cent mille dollars au soleil (1964).  By this time, the careers of both actors were well and truly on the up.  It would be another six years before Claude Sautet returned to leave his mark on French cinema.

Film Synopsis

Doggedly pursued by the police, seasoned gangster Abel Davos evades capture by fleeing to Italy with his wife Thérèse and their two young sons.  Tired of running, Davos decides to turn his back on his criminal career, but only after he has completed one final heist in Milan, assisted by his faithful partner in crime Raymond.  The robbery goes as planned, but Davos and Raymond narrowly escape capture as they make their way towards the French border.  Stealing a boat, the crooks land on a deserted beach in the south of France, but are surprised by two armed customs men.  In the ensuing exchange of bullets, Raymond and Thérèse are shot dead.  Utterly bereft, Davos goes into hiding with his two children.  Realising that luck is not on his side, Davos turns to his mobster partners in Paris and they agree to send someone to collect him and bring him back to the capital.  The man appointed for this task is Éric Stark, a young but dependable criminal.  With Stark's help. Davos manages to return to Paris and, realising that his old friends have deserted him, embarks on a merciless campaign of revenge...