Classe tous risques

I saw this film at Telluride Film Festival in 1997, where one of the screenwriters, José Giovanni, was being honored. It ranks highly as a great noir-crime-drama, incredible performances by Belmondo and Lino Ventura. The attention given to every character, and complex psychological portrayals, detailing loyalty, treachery, love, and hope, are tremendous. It is an excellent drama, an excellent thriller, and an excellent film. Up there with the best of Melville. (The title in English 'Class all risk,' in French 'Classe tous risques' is word-play on 'Classe Touriste,' meaning 'Tourist Class'.

In Milan, the gangster Abel Davos (Lino Ventura) is sentenced to death "In absentia" and decides to return to France. Abel is a family man with wife Thérèse Davos (Simone France) and two sons, and his partner Raymond Naldi (Stan Krol) helps Abel and his family to flee to Nice. However Thérèse and Raymond are killed by the police and Abel uses his former friends in Paris to help him to go to Paris with his sons. They hire the driver Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to bring Abel and his kids to Paris in an ambulance. Along their journey, Eric helps the aspirant actress Liliane (Sandra Milo) on the road and she also goes to Paris in the ambulance. But soon Abel learns that he is alone and his friends when he was powerful will not help him and he counts only with the support of Eric. What will happen to him?

"Classe tous risques" is a great film-noir with the story of the last days of a gangster. The plot shows that there is no code of honor or friendship after the fall of a powerful gangster. All his former friends do not help him when he needs. The conclusion is adequate for the whole situation. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil):"Como Fera Encurralada" ("Like Trapped Beast")

Classe Tous Risques (The Big Risk) is repeatedly recommended every time I look up a Jean-Pierre Melville film that I had to give it a watch as soon as possible. Since I've been discovering Melville and seemingly working backwards through his filmography, it would be easy for me to mistake this as one of his films, but it was made in 1960, by Claude Sautet, before Melville would come and stake his claim on french neo-noir.

Classe Tous Risques has two of the best lead men of the time, Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Ventura plays Abel, a gangster exiled in Italy with his wife and two kids, who wants to come back to Paris because the police are closing in on him. After a roaring and fast paced opening with a big surprise, Abel eventually gets hooked up with Eric Stark (Belmondo) who wants to get into the criminal underworld. Stark becomes Abel's chauffeur and eventual only friend in an underworld that turns it's back on Abel after everything he's done and been through. The film shows the the duality of the two men, the older Abel at the end of his time after tragedy strikes him, and the younger Eric starting off the same way Abel did, falling in love with a beautiful woman who sticks with her man despite the world they are a part of. It never ends pretty for them, or their loved ones. Its one thing to see a individual criminal come to his demise, its different when he has loved ones he risks taking down with him.

Much like Melville's film, the seemingly simple story gets more subtlety complicated as it goes along. As usual, as what I feel with Melville's films, it left my head spinning (in a good way) and dying to re watch it again to pick up what I missed the first time. Classe Tous Risques is a definite keeper.

"Classes tous risques" is one of the best "gangsters" films noirs France has ever produced.Perfect cast :Lino Ventura,a young Jean -Paul Belmondo (who made "a bout de souffle",Godard's thing, the same year),Marcel Dalio and a fine supporting cast ;brilliant script by José Giovanni -who also wrote "le trou" Becker's masterpièce the same year!What a year for him!;wonderful black and white cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet.And taut action,first-class directing by Claude Sautet,who surpasses Jean-Pierre Melville .Whereas the latter films gangsters movie with metaphysical pretensions,which sometimes lasts more than two hours,Claude Sautet directs men of flesh and blood,and the presence of the two children adds moments of extraordinary poignancy which Melville has never been able to generate .And Sautet avoids pathos,excessive sentimentality:the last time Ventura sees his children,coming down in the metro (subway)is a peak of restrained emotion.

Ventura portrays a gangster whose die is cast when the movie begins.He thinks that he can rely on his former acquaintances ,but they are all cowards -we are far from manly friendship dear to Jacques Becker ("touchez pas au grisbi" ) which Melville was to continue throughout the sixties-sometimes abetted by mean women (the film noir misogyny par excellence),living in a rotten microcosm,ready to inform on -we are far from Jean Seberg's simplistic behavior in Godard's "opus"-.

Cloquet works wonders with the picture:the scene on the beach in a starless night when the two children see their mother die after the shoot-out with the customs officers is absolutely mind-boggling.

There's a good use of voice-over,which Sautet only uses when necessary;thus ,the last lines make the ending even stronger than if we have attended the scenes.

Claude Sautet had found a good niche ,and he followed the "classes tous risques" rules quite well with his follow-up "l'arme à gauche" (1965) which featured Ventura again and made a good use of a desert island and a ship.Had he continued in that vein,France would have had a Howard Hawks.In his subsequent works ,only "Max et les ferrailleurs " (1971) showed something of the brilliance he displayed in the first half of the sixties.He had become ,from "les choses de la vie" onwards,the cinema de qualité director who used to focus on tender-hearted bourgeois in such works as "Cesar et Rosalie" (1972),"Vincent François ,Paul et les autres" (1974) or "Mado" (1976)

A film reduced to its essentials (photographed images in sequence) to portray the dawn and dusk of two stoical gangsters that are also human beings. Milan, Nice, Paris, a journey from exile to tragedy, the disloyalty of old partners, a total stranger that becomes the younger image in the mirror, a new friendship---in Sautet hands, all of these human happenings are conveyed not by words but by the power of images, expressions, action, angles, movement, gestures, moments. Sautet belongs to the same league of Melville, Bresson and other masters of the craft of putting together "pictures in motion".

"Less is more". Minimalism assumes that the moviegoer is a human being too, s/he interprets, reflects, makes sense and finds meanings. No distractions and full advantage of the cinematic form: images, sound, edition. Not everything has to be shown or explained. Less words and less information demand for the viewer to fill in the blanks, an active role that might be hard to take. But once the watcher accepts the challenge, the outcome is a tailor-made experience---he is not a passive watcher anymore.