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Classe tous risques

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After hiding out in Milan for nearly a decade, fugitive gangland chief Abel Davos (Lino Ventura) sneaks back to Paris with his children despite a death sentence hanging over his head. Accompanied by appointed guardian Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo, fresh off his star turn in Breathless) and beset by backstabbing former friends, Abel begins a journey through the postwar Parisian underworld that's both throat grabbing and soul searching. A character study of a career criminal at the end of his rope, this rugged noir from Claude Sautet (Un coeur en hiver) is a thrilling highlight of sixties French cinema.

Special Features

- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- Excerpts from Claude Sautet ou la magie invisible, a 2003 documentary on the director by writers N. T. Binh and Dominique Rabourdin
- Interview with Classe tous risques novelist and screenwriter José Giovanni
- Archival interview footage featuring actor Lino Ventura discussing his career
- Original French and U.S. release trailers
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: New essays by director Bertrand Tavernier and Binh, a reprinted interview with Sautet, and a 1962 tribute by Jean-Pierre Melville

Criterionforum.org user rating averages

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Anyone seen this film? All I really know about it is that Rivette and Truffaut hated it, and Melville loved it.

domino harvey wrote:Anyone seen this film? All I really know about it is that Rivette and Truffaut hated it, and Melville loved it.

I saw this back when Rialto put it out in 2006. I remember being thoroughly underwhelmed, but not much else. Maybe Melville loved CLASSE because it makes his work look even better in comparison.

I loved it, but then I'm a sucker for Lino Ventura and French gangster films. However, I do think it suffers by comparison with Melville's Deuxième Souffle, also with Ventura as a lone gangster on the lam, and also from a José Giovanni novel. Sautet's film is more old-fashioned, less flamboyant than Melville's. It's also quite untypical of Sautet's main body of work, though I guess the solitude of Ventura's character is a theme that runs through many of Sautet's films.

domino harvey wrote:Anyone seen this film? All I really know about it is that Rivette and Truffaut hated it, and Melville loved it.

Moved from "Rental" to "Must-Have" status.

Truly mesmerising film...if you like Melville its a no brainer.

What A Disgrace wrote:

domino harvey wrote:Anyone seen this film? All I really know about it is that Rivette and Truffaut hated it, and Melville loved it.

Moved from "Rental" to "Must-Have" status.

Ditto. Melville's recommendations have yet to disappoint me. He probably went to the movies more than Truffaut - fuck, anyone, actually. Jean-Pierre was one of the filmmakers who did love Cinema, he was Cinema.

What did Truffaut say about Classe tous risques? In his 1974 essay on Sautet's Vincent, François, Paul et les autres, Truffaut spoke highly of him, and the film (Vincent...), which Truffaut clearly loved. The closest I can find to a criticism of Classe is where Truffaut writes about Sautet's "unavoidable detour through the crime films."

Never had love for Truffaut so this may be a nice bolt from the blue for me. Any other classic voices around here yay or nay for this?

If it's on the level of Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi then I'll be very happy. Every French "shades of noir"/gangster film Criterion has released has been a satisfactory purchase for me.

HerrSchreck wrote:Never had love for Truffaut so this may be a nice bolt from the blue for me. Any other classic voices around here yay or nay for this?

I actually own this film in my collection Schreck. It is quite straightforward and not on par with some of the better entries in the genre. But Ventura is quite enjoyable often mixing the noir with humor which was one of his trademarks. Also, this is a very early Sautet and any comparisons with the director's nuanced storytelling (Mado, Un Coeur en Hiver) will very much not be in favor of this production. The characters are very, very transparent. This being said I think that you will enjoy it if some of the Becker titles mentioned above appealed to your taste.

Ciao,
Pro-B

I'm sure this was originally announced in 1.33:1, and from the look of those screencaps that's what they should have stuck with. I'm still excited to see the film though.

Narshty wrote:I'm sure this was originally announced in 1.33:1, and from the look of those screencaps that's what they should have stuck with. I'm still excited to see the film though.

Yikes. You're right. 1.66 would make sense for a European film in 1960, but those all look terribly overmatted. Lino Ventura has lost his head!

Pretty good flick--Ventura and Belmondo just have that certain "it" of star-power. Ventura's especially good in this film.

The film's a nice change of pace from the more typical art-house stuff I've been watching lately, but there are still some really cool shots (when Lino knocks the milk off the table, the deep-focus shot when Belmondo drops Liliana off, etc.) and some downright Melville-ian camaraderie. Even more than Melville, however, Classe tous risques reminded me of Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi, and I agree with pro-b that fans of Becker will probably dig this one.

In the accompanying booket's Melville excerpt, taken from the March/April 1962 issue of Presence du cinema, he takes a swipe at both Godard and Truffaut: "(Sautet)...has taught us a lesson in discretion and efficiency that does not seem especially valued at a time when we see that it's the tastes of five-and-dime customers that make and undo talents and values (A Woman is a Woman, Jules and Jim)." Ouch!

jbeall wrote:Even more than Melville, however, Classe tous risques reminded me of Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi, and I agree with pro-b that fans of Becker will probably dig this one.

This is accurate as I didn't care much for this film or grisbi. It's Melvillean only in that it's French and about criminals. There is some nice stuff between Ventura and Belmondo--

Spoiler

particularly the trusting relationship that emerges between these two strangers as all of Ventura's friends betray him in one way or another

--but I was left pretty cool by the film overall. In fact, every time Belmondo appeared on screen, I wished I was watching Le Doulos instead. I must say, though, I LOVED Dalio's character's daughter. Shame she was only in the film for a couple of minutes.

I also thought how much more interesting the film would have been if told from the point-of-view of the older son, Pierrot, in a sort of Fanny & Alexander fashion. And I don't normally like films told from the point of view of children.

Matt wrote:I also thought how much more interesting the film would have been if told from the point-of-view of the older son, Pierrot, in a sort of Fanny & Alexander fashion. And I don't normally like films told from the point of view of children.

Something like that crossed my mind while I was watching this last week. The voice over narration just didn't work for me. Not a bad film in any way, just a bit long without an overwhelming ending.

I thought there was such a lot of this film scattered throughout later Melville, particularly LE SAMOURAI and LE CERCLE ROUGE: the use of Ventura, Belmondo and Giovanni; the theme of betrayal by former cronies, contrasted with loyalty from new acquaintances; the solitary waiting in a dingy flat; rain-slick Paris streets; even a cat!

I don't disagree that Melville refined these elements (the ending particularly felt rushed, and there was no momentum or weight to Ventura's humiliating decline), but clearly he was paying attention - I don't see any of these tropes in his earlier films.

I respect the influence it had on Melville's films but I didn't particularly care for it. It was enjoyable, sure, but it didn't have the punch required to make it truly engaging and the finale was lacking.

Some here have made inevitable comparisons to Les Dolous. To be honest, I thought while that was a fine film it ran on for too long and the ending seemed like a simple way to clean everything up.

Can anyone comment how this film compares to Sautet's other films? I thought that this movie was just okay, but I am interested in the director. Any recommendations/ones to stay away from?

With BFI's dual format announced for a Feb 24, 2014 release, is there any chance Criterion will also be porting the print for an upgrade in USA?

Max & The Junkmen

Michel Piccoli's face is a mask of inexpression: a face that hasn't seen the sun in years, ghostly white, and devoid of any emotion until the final, shocking conclusion when we finally realize how much it's been holding in. Piccoli has the lead role of the monomaniacal Max, an independently wealthy loner and former judge who's resigned from the bench to take a position as an inspector with the French police. As a judge he was forced to watch as clearly guilty defendants walked due to lack of evidence and though he doesn't need to work at all-he receives a monthly check from the family fortune-his sense of justice has been disrupted. Frustrated at the film's outset after his latest sting operation has failed, he has a chance meeting with an old army acquaintance (the word "friend" doesn't exist in Max's vocabulary)-Abel (played beautifully by Bernard Fresson) who leads a small scale life of crime; stealing cars as well as industrial size rolls of copper wire from work sites. He's an amiable, good natured character despite his career choice and is a counterpoint to the dour and darkly obsessive Max. Abel and his crew live in the junkyard of the man who fences their stolen goods. These men are not inept, they're just amateurs lacking any ambition and accepting of their lowly place. The best comparison I can think of is to DeNiro's crew from Heat-this would be their polar opposite. The police captain in charge of their district- Rosinsky- who Max must get clearance from before setting his plan in motion is incredulous when hearing this small time crew has designs on something as large as a bank. But since Max insists it's true he acquiesces and this sets up the rest of the movie

Max poses as a banker and begins feeding information to Abel's girlfriend Lily, a prostitute played by Romy Schneider who he sees once a week. The information he knows Lily will pass on to Abel suggests a golden opportunity, a cake walk that even this thoroughly unmotivated group can't pass up. Max keeps his relationship with Lily physically platonic but his manipulations are painful to watch. As the depths of Max's cynicism become apparent it's clear that he's not overly bothered keeping up the false pretenses, his obsessive nature obscuring any matters of conscience- assuming he had one to begin with. Lily is here strictly as a means to an end and seems no wiser to what he's formulating, but the two develop a bond and in their last session she refuses payment which leads to their only intimate time together. Lily may be dishonest too, using the information Max gives her to help plot a robbery is criminal but as Max sees numerous times throughout the film, she moves through the lower echelons of the Paris suburbs happily. She's at ease in her world; accepted, with a group of friends she can relate to and with a man who cares for her. These people are hardly villainous and that they will all be destroyed essentially by the whims of one man is part of what makes the film's conclusion so effective. When Max learns of Lily's fate, which he himself has largely wrought, he finally cracks under its heaviness.