Classe tous risques

Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo

Claude Sautet's Classe tous risques is a superb Gallic gangster film from 1960.  It is a fluid genre film that upends some of the conventions of the genre. Lino Ventura stars as Abel Davos, a lifelong hood who we first meet in exile in Italy. He has a wife and two young sons and he yearns to return with them to France even though a death sentence hangs over his head there. In order to finance this move, Abel and his partner in crime, Raymond (Stan Krol), commit a daring daytime robbery in Milan. On the run from the Italian police now, Abel and Raymond hijack a small boat and try to sneak into France with Abel's wife and children in tow. They are met on the shore by gendarmes and a gunfight ensues which results in numerous deaths including that of Abel's wife and Raymond.

The opening thirty minutes of Classe tous risques are a terrific example of terse action cinema with a minimum of exposition and dialogue. Sautet admitted he modeled his style on the lean pursuit Westerns of Budd Boetticher, especially Seven Men From Now. Sautet and screenwriter José Giovanni based the screenplay on Giovanni's noir novel, but reworked the book. The film includes an omniscient narrator, but the narration is more spare and ironic than in the novel. Giovanni was quite a sinister figure and gleaned the source of this tale from a buddy in stir. He penned many a noir tale that ended up as films including Le trou, Le deuxième souffle, and Symphonie pour un massacre. Classes tous risques was Sautet's debut as a director. He had worked as an assistant director previously for such luminaries as Jacques Becker and Georges Franju. He had just filled in on a film after the director had been fired. Ventura had been the lead in that film and, impressed by Sautet, recommended him to Classe tous risques' producer.

After the shootout on the beach, the film changes tone somewhat and becomes a mournful meditation on friendship, or the lack thereof, and fatalism. Ventura's hangdog looks are perfect for a tale that limns an arc of decline. Abel has to hole up in Nice with his two young sons. I don't recall another noir that has its protagonist in such a predicament. Thus, Ventura gets to show two sides of his talent in this role. Ever since his film debut in Touchez pas au grisbi, Ventura, a former champion wrestler, had been stuck playing, as he put it, "gorilla' roles. He does get to show off this aspect of his talent in the film, dispatching a number of opponents with brute strength in striking, well-directed action scenes. However, Abel's scenes with his sons display a vulnerability and sensitivity heretofore unexplored. Sautet even coaxed spontaneous and believable performances from those kids. Abel knows that he must ditch the tikes, but needs help. He calls up associates from his old criminal days in Paris. They seem reluctant, but do eventually agree to hire an ambulance and a driver in order to squire him and his sons covertly to Paris.

Sandra Milo and Belmondo

The driver is named Eric Stark and is played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, on the verge of stardom. Retroactive advertising for this picture made him the co-lead, but this is Ventura's picture. Belmondo pops up forty minutes or so into the flick. Abel is initially suspicious of Stark, but bonds with him after finding out he was a friend of Raymond's. He doesn't even mind when Stark picks up a skirt named Liliane (Sandra Milo), an actress they witness being abused by her manager by the roadside. Ms. Milo was the girlfriend of the producer and was foisted on Mr. Sautet, but holds her own in sterling company. Maybe it was not so hard to appear to be turned on by Mr. Belmondo, then at the height of his beauty/ugliness. More importantly for the film, the cocky young bantam Belmondo has a great rapport with the taciturn bull Ventura. Stark proves a friend  when Abel needs it, for his former companions prove slippery indeed. Noted scene stealer such as Marcel Dalio and Claude Cerval etch a memorable rogue's gallery. Abel has his revenge, but it is muted, limited, and not passionate. It is served cold by a heart in winter. Abel has had enough and walks resignedly to his fate. He melts into a crowd, as if Sautet is saying: they walk amongst us. 

Even the smallest roles in this movie give it texture and bite: an old friend of Abel's who works in at a maritime museum, a bratty step-daughter of Dalio's fishy fence, and an innocent maid at Belmondo's hotel are all memorably drawn and executed. Sautet is not a particularly distinctive stylist, but his work does seize upon the world at large in all its breadth. If I had to type him it would be as an analytic objectivist like Otto Preminger. Which makes sense since Sautet like Preminger was feted by the Mac-Mahonists in Paris. Sautet had many ups and downs in his career. Classe tous risques was initially a flop, but has built up enough of a following to land in the Criterion Collection. When Sautet was not directing, he worked as a very successful script doctor, akin to Elaine May or Robert Towne in our country. He did leave us many excellent films that he directed himself including Max et les Ferrailleurs, Un cœur en hiver, Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud, and Classe tous risques.