DVD: Classe Tous Risques

Claude Sautet’s gripping noir thriller “Classe Tous Risques”, originally released in 1960,  was an inspiration for Jean-Pierre Melville’s collection of peerless films set in the French underworld. Not surprising, as the script was written by the novelist and ex-cop José Giovanni, who also supplied the story for Melville’s classic “Le Deuxième Souffle”.

As the excellent TV series "Braquo", written by another ex-policeman, Olivier Marchal, has shown, experience of a profession in which the boundaries between good and evil are blurred makes for convincing and emotionally engaging stories.

Both directors used the actor Lino Ventura, the tough-guy successor to Jean Gabin, the incarnation of Gallic ruthlessness, an edge-of-despair attempt at keeping emotions at bay, which allows just that little bit of vulnerability to come through – enough for us all to identify with the obviously bad guy.

In “Classe Tous Risques” – a pun on the French expression for the more innocuous ‘classe touriste’ – we are on a journey though hardly a tourist trip,  the last-ditch escape from difficulties in Italy, of  the gangland boss Abel.  His destiny darkens as he loses his friend and wife early in the film. The pace never lets up – from the surprisingly dramatic opening, in which the chase – usually a set-piece that comes later in the film – takes off with desperate frenzy.

As all gangland fugitives, Abel seeks help from his old associates, and gets drawn into a web of distrust and betrayal. The tone of the film is set from the outset: it’s is only a matter of time before Abel must settle his karmic debt. The classic fugitive movie tropes are skillfully undermined yet strengthened by the presence of his two kids: as most villains, he feels for his boys, but survival must take precedence.

The cast includes a youthful Jean-Paul Belmondo, as a tough but humane freelance gangster.  For a thriller, the film displays unusual emotional intelligence, a quality displayed throughout the late director’s much later  and very different masterpiece, “Un Coeur en Hiver”.

The bonuses on this re-issue are a little disappointing: a portrait of  under-rated Claude Sautet would have been more useful that the over-long hagiography of lead-actor Lino Ventura that is included in the package. But the movie’s print is crystal clear and the sharpness of the original black-and-white a joy to behold.