Classe tous risques
Tags: violence, neo noir, murder

Plot synopsis:
French gangster Abel Davos, having been tried in absentia and sentenced to death, flees to Italy with his wife and their two children. After a successful holdup in Milan with an accomplice Raymond, they try to re-enter France by boat, but while landing at a deserted cove by night are surprised by two customs officers. After a gun battle which leaves the customs men, his wife and Raymond dead, a massive police hunt begins. Hidden with his two boys in Nice by a former associate, Abel rings Riton, an old ally in Paris, asking him and his friend Fargier to come and collect him. Riton now runs a bar and Fargier a hotel; neither wants to risk his life or reputation for a lone wanted man. However they buy an ambulance and recruit a young gangster called Éric to bring Abel and his children back in it. On the way, Éric saves a young woman Liliane, who is being attacked by a man, and she agrees to pose as a nurse for Abel, who is bandaged to conceal him.
Back in Paris, his friends tell Abel there is little more they can do for him. Éric however is sympathetic to the man's plight and, after hiding him in the building where he lives, helps him place his children with family friends. He also gets him a false passport but Abel, needing money to escape, robs the respected fence Gibelin. Unable to go to the police, Gibelin consults Fargier and Riton, who are both under police pressure because of their past association with Abel. They hire a private detective to find Abel's hideout, but Abel captures the man and forces the truth out of him. Realising he is betrayed, Abel starts his revenge by killing Fargier, whose wife then dies of shock. Riton, whose wife has always mistrusted Abel, informs the police. As they storm Abel's hideout, Éric creates a diversion and is shot in both legs. Though Abel gets away, an epilogue says he is later caught, tried and executed.

Review: Odd one should be able to stumble into "Classe Tous Risques" only by chance; it should be on any "best of film-noir" list, including IMDb's.Lino Ventura is as good as ever; knowing of his dire, delicate family situation gives extra weight to his almost expressionless face and brief dialogues.
Belmondo's restrained performance under Sautet's firm direction only shows what a wonderful actor he could - and should -have been."Classe Tous Risques" is utterly mininal, dry and cold, without Melville's artistic scenery, pretty faces and fancy cars.
The final sentence of the film - a voice-over telling of Davos' end in no more than ten dry, sombre words - leaves you with a hard punch in the stomach.A true jewel in the great crown of French film-noir..
When I also read that it was in the vein of the classic French crime films ala Jean Pierre Melville, I jumped at the chance to check it out (at best it would rank up with his great works, and at worst I would get some good popcorn in a great theater).
It was well worth the admission, as Classe tous risques is one of those kinds of French films that is just waiting to be re-discovered (or discovered for the first time).
With a film in the vein of this sort, you know how it will end, but it's the cool, observant journey that counts.The film features a performance with some real truth and honesty, amid the "old-school" criminal's code, by Lino Ventura as Aldo, who at the start of the film (one of the best beginnings to a film in this genre and country) steals a hefty amount of money with his partner in crime).
Like Melville, Sautet doesn't allow any fat to his story, and it's a very tightly structured film, with some good doses of humor here and there (I was sometimes grinning at the audacity of the criminals in the beginning chase sequence, and also with a particular woman who had a finicky thing with her cat and a fish).Along with a fine score by the great George Delerue, exceptional cinematography, and a mood that is seldom met let alone matched now adays, Classe tous risques is a reminder of that bridge between the real old-school film-noir, and the latter day crime films.
Gangsters in these new sort of "thug-life" movies have a 1000th of the class and honor of the thieves in this film, and is a second banana to the works of Melville and Jules Dassin (a compliment I assure you).
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.
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.
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" feels like the granddaddy of "The Sopranos" in mixing the criminal and the domestic, and of the buddy film to feel as contemporary as "Reservoir Dogs."Even as these gangsters are affectionately entangled with wives, children, lovers and parents, they are coldly ruthless, and we are constantly reminded they are, no matter what warm situation we also see them in.
It is a high point of emotion when a wife is told off that she's not the one the gangster is friends with, while virtually the only time we hear music on the soundtrack is when he recalls his wife.Streetscapes in Italy and France are marvelously used, in blinding daylight to dark water and highways, from the opening set up of a pair of brazen robbers -- who are traveling with one's wife and two kids.
This is not the cliché crusty old guy softened with the big-eyed orphan; these are their jobs and their families and they intersect in horrific ways.The film pulls no punches in unexpectedly killing off characters, directly and as collateral damage, and challenging our sympathy for them, right through to the unsentimental end, which is probably why there was never an American remake.
It seems so fresh that it's not until Jean-Paul Belmondo enters almost a third of the way into the film, looking so insouciant as a young punk, that one realizes that this is from 1960.
I have just watched on Italian TV the excellent crime drama CLASSE TOUS RISQUES (1960; aka: THE BIG RISK), directed by Claude Sautet and starring the late Lino Ventura (in one of his best roles) and a very young Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Ventura was a regular in gangster films of the period: he was in Jacques Becker's masterful TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (1953; aka: HANDS OFF THE LOOT!) playing the main villainous role and in which he conducts an effective vis-à-vis with nominal star Jean Gabin, but he then took the lead for Jean-Pierre Melville's magnificent thriller set in WWII, L'ARMEE' DES OMBRES (1969; aka: ARMY OF SHADOWS).
Incidentally, next week Criterion will release Melville's BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1955) and I hope they can put their hands on other films by this French master, notably LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES (1950), from the play by Jean Cocteau; LE DEUXIEME SOUFFLE (1966; aka: SECOND BREATH), also starring Lino Ventura; LE SAMOURAI (1967), his undisputed chef d'oeuvre; the aforementioned L'ARMEE' DES OMBRES and LE CERCLE ROUGE (1970; aka: THE RED CIRCLE).
It is worth noting that the last two may very well be future Criterion DVDs. For the record, I have recorded ENFANTS, SAMOURAI, ARMEE' and CERCLE (which I have yet to watch) off French TV, along with the atypical LEON MORIN, PRETRE (1961) and the little-seen LE DOULOS (1962; aka: THE FINGER MAN), both of which star Jean-Paul Belmondo.
The plot does have its improbable turns: for example, Belmondo's and Sandra Milo's characters are a bit too good to be true, aiding Ventura without batting an eyelid (despite the obvious danger involved) just minutes after making his acquaintance, while the ending is a bit of a letdown (the film is abruptly interrupted and the plot resolved with a hurried voice-over explanation)...but Ventura's solid performance as a man betrayed, quietly desperate at first but driven eventually to sudden eruptions of violence, holds the film firmly together and makes THE BIG RISK a classic of its kind.
Other films by Claude Sautet I have watched are LES CHOSES DE LA VIE (1969), MAX ET LES FERRAILLEURS (1971; aka: MAX AND THE SCRAP-MONGERS), CESAR ET ROSALIE (1972), all on Italian TV, and VINCENT, FRANCOIS, PAUL ET LES AUTRES (1974), which I have recorded off French TV.
VINCENT, FRANCOIS, PAUL ET LES AUTRES is perhaps Sautet's best film: it co-stars Serge Reggiani, Gerard Depardieu (one of his first), Marie Dubois and Stephane Audran (an extended cameo, really, but effective nonetheless).As I have said, I wish that some of the films I mentioned by Claude Sautet and Jean-Pierre Melville, including of course THE BIG RISK, will one day be released on DVD.
It ranks highly as a great noir-crime-drama, incredible performances by Belmondo and Lino Ventura.
"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).
Both Bresson and Melville are reputed to be big fans of "Classe Tous Risques" and it's easy to see why; either man could have directed this classic French gangster picture.
From the absolutely stunning opening sequence it's clear that this film will be infused with a good dose of existential angst as well as the requisite thrills that a really good gangster movie needs.Two fugitives, (Lino Ventura and Stan Krol), have decided it's time to get out of Italy and back to France as the net closes in around them but they need money.
The money they make, however, is hardly enough to sustain them, (Ventura has a wife and two sons to support), so they must rely on a network of friends and criminal associates and men on the run, already operating on the very edge, need all the friends they can get, however untrustworthy they may be and these guys friends prove to be very untrustworthy indeed but when tragedy strikes Ventura seems to have no option.With the possible exceptions of Dassin's "Rififi" and several of Jean-Pierre Melville's classic gangster pictures this remains one of the greatest of genre films and is all the better for being, fundamentally, a low-key character piece.
Ventura is perfect as the world-weary thief who would really rather just settle down and raise his family and he is matched by a young Jean-Paul Belmondo as the stranger who becomes his only real friend and ally.
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.
I agree with all the strenghts mentioned in the other reviews but there are some beats missing here that keep it firmly inside the genre of crime drama or film noir and limit it from being a great drama beyond the limits of the "elements" that make up film noir--not to say that the great film noirs aren't/can't/shouldn't be also great dramas, but this one isn't.One other note the music in the film is used sparingly but I would say is used to accentuate the action more frequently than the wife elements.Great set up to this film by the way with an abrupt sort of non ending ending that is either just right or a let down depends.Spoilers follow as to some specifics.The big turn in the story involves the children seeing their mother die, or it should be the big moment.
They really just have none, in the next scene they look as if nothing happened.In like fashion there is a bond that forms between Belmondo and Ventura's characters.
I don't know, other than maybe the goals of the film were limited to giving the audience what it wants from a crime melodrama--suggest some deeper elements, then move on to ignore them.IN CONCLUSION THEN.Too bad there is much to recommend this film, Ventura is very very good, but too bad it could have been a great drama as well as a crime story--as with IMDb favorite movie of all time THE GODFATHER.
Lino Ventura stars in this and although born in Italy lived most of his life in France and was a great favourite of French cinema in the 50s through to the 80s but he was no Belmondo.
Classe Tous Risques (The Big Risk) is a French gangster movie that doesn't try for style.
And because Abel Davos is played by Lino Ventura, we wind up emotionally invested in this taciturn, tough killer who loves his wife and kids, has an encounter with customs agents on the shore near Nice at night that neither he nor we expect, and who proves just as willing to shoot a cop or a betrayer with as little emotion as flicking off a bit of lint.
Lino Ventura dominates the movie, yet when he is paired with Jean-Paul Belmondo a curious chemistry happens.
Career criminal and crime boss, Abel Davos (Lino Ventura) has been on the run for more than 10 years, hiding out in Milan, Italy.
A now wounded Davos with two kids in tow is going to be easily spotted by police, so he calls on his old friends in Paris to send help, but they have moved on since their old friend went into hiding and are not too inclined to take a risk themselves, so they send small time thief, Eric Stark (Jean Paul Belmondo) to rescue him.
Davos is disgusted that such a lowly thief is sent to his aid, despite the fact he hits it off immediately with the charming Stark, he sets out to find out why he has been snubbed, but their betrayal doesn't stop there.Classe Tous Risques (aka the Big Risk) was written for the screen by former death row inmate and crime writer Jose Giovanni (Le Trou, Le Clan des Siciliens), with Ventura already on board for the project, Giovanniwanted someone unique to direct the project, Ventura suggested an assistant director that had caught his attention on a previous project,one Claude Sautet, best known at the time for assisting Georges Franju on Les Yeux sans Visage.
I've only seen about a half dozen films starring Lino Ventura, but this one seems very much like the others.
And, like these other films, he also has a very strong, though twisted, moral code.Abel Davos (Ventura) and his partner, Lilane, are both living in Italy and are career criminals.
In fact, their tepid response to his return ends up unleashing a series of terrible events towards the end of the film.Along the way, Davos meets and is taken in my a stranger, Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo).
Overall, this is a very good crime film--sort of like French Film Noir.
The acting is first-rate (especially from Ventura and Belmondo), the direction very sure and the writing very nice, though I am sure many won't like the ending.
Talking to a fellow IMDber about the Robert Hossein Film Noir Night Is Not For Sleep,I got given a list of French Film Noir (FFN) recs.Cutting away the FFN's I've seen,I spotted a Fabulous-looking Film Noir that Criterion has put out,which led to me deciding to risk it.The plot:Performing a successful robbery in Italy, Abel Davos and Raymond Naldi decide to escape the police by running off to France.
Folding other gangsters into Davos tragic family drama,Sautet and Cloquet keep Davos undercover with a Film Noir elegance,with long shadows curling round each of Davos and Stark's hide-outs, until they all choke on Film Noir doom.Fighting at the side of the road,the gorgeous Sandra Milo gives a superb performance as Liliane.Dressed as a hard-edge Punk Rocker,Milo gives Liliane a warm,heart-felt mood,as Liliane gradually finds herself being on Stark's side.Entering as an outsider, Jean-Paul Belmondo gives an excellent performance as Stark,thanks to Belmondo threading Stark with an out of his depth eagerness,with rough Film Noir street fighting smarts.Trying to keep his sons away from seeing his work, Lino Ventura gives a magnificent performance as Abel Davos.
This is a Black and White film from France,Simple plot, gangster on the run seeking & getting help etc.
especially the lead played by Lino Ventura & in a smaller BUT vital role Jean Paul Belmondo.
On the other hand second lead Jean-Paul Belmondo was here making his second film in one year; the other one was Brainless for Godard, and here he shows what he can do when there is a REAL director behind the camera.