Review #1: Classe Tous Risques

This dandy film [I'll get the opinion out right in front] by Claude Sautet is a gem that has been a little lost in film history, being released in 1960, the same year and with a star in common [Jean-Paul Belmondo, but here in a supporting role] as Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, and we've all heard of that one...

While Sautet [better know for 1992's Un Coeur en Hiver... a dandy flick, too] is paying tribute to American gangster films with his take on the "honour among thieves" theme, this film did not hit on enough of the theoretic notes of la Nouvelle Vague, [the New Wave] to be noticed, either in 1960 or in subsequent film criticism.

Abel Davos [played with vulnerable menace by Lino Ventura, an Italian-born former prize-fighter and professional wrestler who made a career out of playing thugs, heavies, and police officers...] is a wanted man, on the lam in Italy [before the days of the European Union's ease of travel between states], and feeling the heat. To complicate matters he is accompanied by a henchman [Raymond, played by Stan Krol], which is expected, and by his wife and two sons, which is unexpected... and it seems that he cares for his family life more than his life of crime... except he needs one last big heist to secure their return to France... and in the crime drama genre, we all know what one last job means, don't we?

Not to gloss over important details but also not wanting to ruin this film for you, I will jump ahead to when Abel waits in Nice for his "old friends" in Paris to help him out [are there any friends in the world of crime (on film)?]... and they insult him by not coming to his rescue personally, but sending a young unknown, Eric [played by Jean-Paul Belmondo], to help him return to Paris. Can Abel trust Eric? Can his family be saved? What should be done about the apparent betrayal demonstrated by the half-hearted attempt at support? The rest of the film deals with these critical questions.

What I particularly enjoyed about this film is its dependence on character, rather than action, to tell the story. At their first introduction, most of the characters do not strike the viewer as especially sympathetic; however, I found myself both cheering for otherwise-reprehensible gangster-types and seeing the virtues of lying and revenge. Of course, this might say more about my moral ambiguity than I would like to reveal in a simple film review, but I am sure than anyone else watching this film will enjoy the notion of the vulnerable villain... Abel's hardman/ familyman duality is something we have witnessed more currently with Tony Soprano [with the added variable of the necessity of a psychiatrist]; in Sautet's work this element is played out with simplicity and grace.

The title of this film is translated into English as The Big Risk; however, Classe Tous Risques is a hard-to-translate play on words that combines tourism and insurance... both of which seem risky in this production.

Rather than prattle on, I will just say that I liked this film and hope that you will trust this judgment sufficiently to take a look at this film noir gem.