This 1960 gem of a French crime drama, directed by Claude Sautet, has been restored and re-released by the BFI this year. Sautet, most famous for his work as a writer on EYES WITHOUT A FACE, here crafts a taut crime story which is of a piece with the bleak, existential noir films of Jean-Pierre Melville that would come later in the 1960s.
CLASSE TOUS RISQUES is the story of an aging thief adrift in a time where the old codes of the criminal world no longer hold sway. Lino Ventura’s hangdog countenance as perfect for his performance as protagonist Abel Davos, who’s been on the run with his wife and young children for several years. He’s introduced in one of the film’s rare uses of voiceover, as a flat, passionless voice gives his details; “sentenced to death in absentia”, he’s been moving ever since.
He pulls a robbery in Italy with his associate Raymond (Stan Krol) to fund his return home to Paris. The early part of the film is a breathless series of chases, with Davos staying only a few steps ahead of the police as he flees for the French border by motorbike, car or boat. With his situation going from bad to worse, he issues a desperate plea for help to his old friends in Paris.
These friends for the most part, have retired, gone straight or moved to more low-key work. They want to help him, but not enough to unduly stick their necks out. There are some darkly comic scenes where they try to pass the responsibility on to one another. Eventually, it’s decided that they’ll recruit lone operator Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to travel down south and deliver Davos home.
Coming straight off his starring role in Jean-Luc Godard’s A BOUT DE SOUFFLE, Belmondo here plays a more conventional type of crook. Still slightly fresh-faced, he makes an engaging contrast to Ventura’s stoic veteran, as the two head to Paris in a stolen ambulance, disguised respectively as driver and patient.
There’s an almost neorealist quality brought to bear on this study of the loneliness of the career criminal.
On their way, they pick up Liliane (Sandra Milo), an actress on her way to the capital. Milo delivers a fascinating performance as the poised and enigmatic Liliane, who reacts to the discovery of her companions’ identities with cool disinterest. She and Stark strike up a rapport during the journey; we see their coming together as a brief moment of connection for a man who allows himself little.
Davos, on the other hand, is finding himself more alone than ever. The deflation of tension in the film’s second act matches his disenchantment as he starts to wonder what his narrow escape was even for. Taking care of his children as sole parent is a trying task, as we see in the scenes with his two boys (played with touching directness by Robert Desnoux and Thierry Lavoye). And as he stays in hiding, the opportunities to earn money through crime – the only way he knows how – are out of reach. He’s a man slowly being stripped of the masculine roles by which he defines himself, from husband and father to breadwinner.
The Paris-set stretches of the film emphasise claustrophobia, with the earlier wide-open panoramas of the European countryside replaced with narrow streets and stairwells hemming in our characters. The cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet is adept at picking out these solitary men as they wander through crowds, isolated from those around them. There’s an almost neorealist quality brought to bear on this study of the loneliness of the career criminal, interspersed with the New Wave breeziness of Stark and Liliane’s budding romance.
Ultimately, the unchangeable nature of its protagonist drives the film to its denouement. The rest of the narrative dominoes fall with a grim inevitability, as Davos’ realisation that there truly is no honour among thieves leads him inexorably to a confrontation with his former allies. The closing moments of the film, accompanied by the narrator’s matter-of-fact summation, provide the perfectly downbeat coda to his story.
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