Classe tous risques
d. Claude Sautet (1960)
The Criterion Collection
Today The Criterion Collection is releasing a 4K edition of Claude Sautet’s 1960 gangster noir Classe tous risqes, and it is beautiful! It never fails to amaze me to see an old black-and-white film in ultra-high definition: the full range from luminous whites to deep blacks, with a rich spectrum of grays in between. This is a film that deserves this treatment. The screen captures below are from the Blu-ray, which also looks amazing, but just know the 4K looks even better.
I was also delighted by the supplemental material on this disc. I know, I usually save that discussion for the end of my review, but this film has such an interesting history that it’s worth bringing in here as part of the setup. It is based on a novel by the French author José Giovanni, whose work also served as the basis for films by Jacques Becker (Le trou, one of my favorites) and Jean-Pierre Melville (Le deuxième souffle).
Giovanni was not a man to be admired. He collaborated with the Nazis during the occupation and was later convicted of a triple homicide committed in 1946. And yet, his firsthand knowledge of the criminal underground and his skill as a writer have led to some fascinating and insightful films (I have not read the books). He appears in one of the supplements, reflecting on his time on death row before his sentence was commuted. It was there that he met the man who would become the inspiration for Classe tous risques.
Also fascinating is learning more about the director, Claude Sautet. He had spent years working as an assistant director before making this film, and that experience is evident throughout. He also appears in one of the supplements, where he explains his desire to let the physicality of the film speak for itself. The result is a film with relatively little dialogue that drops us directly into the action, asking us to find our footing through the language of cinema itself.
So let’s get to the setup. Well before the opening scene of the film, Abel Davos (Lino Ventura) was a formidable and successful gangster in Paris. Before he met his wife and started a filmy, he committed crimes for which he is still awaiting the consequences. He’s been running for years, which is made all the more difficult since he now has a family he truly loves. For nearly a decade he has lived in relative safety in Milan, though back in France he has been tried in absentia and sentenced to death. But even that safety in Milan is beginning to slip. Sensing that the Italian authorities are closing in, he decides it’s time to take his wife and two young sons back to Paris, trusting that he can rely on old friends he helped in their own troubled moments.
The film begins in the middle of this flight, and in its first twenty minutes, marked by very little dialogue, it follows Davos as he makes his way from Milan back to France with his family, aided by a loyal friend.
From the start the flight is tense and violent. Sautet captures it on location in Milan, rendered in that gorgeous black and white. In this moment, the Duomo di Milano rises in the background, anchoring the scene in a real and imposing world.
Again, we as the audience don’t entirely know what’s happening, but we can feel the anxiety, the dread, even as the children play in the background. One of the film’s great strengths is the way it observes those two boys, not fully aware of what is unfolding, still simply being children, yet faintly attuned to the tragedy gathering around them.
As Davos draws closer to Paris, his “friends” grow increasingly uneasy about what his return might mean for their now comfortable lives. He needs help, but rather than risk themselves, they send a young man who has never even met him. This is how we are introduced to the exceptional Jean-Paul Belmondo, playing the charming criminal Éric Stark, dispatched to guide Davos safely into Paris.
Skeptical of his friends’ intentions, Davos nevertheless has little choice but to place his trust in this young man.
It is not an easy road. As Davos flees the police, who always seem just a step behind, he is also trying to secure help from allies who would rather keep their distance. And through it all, Sautet never lets us forget that Davos is tired, wounded, and deeply human, even if he is not, finally, an admirable one.
This was my first time seeing this film, and it has only continued to grow in my estimation as I think back on it. Sautet tells a striking story about a man who has family and friends and yet remains profoundly alone, always on the edge of a precipice. And he captures that isolation not only in moments of violence or flight, but in quiet, passing details, like the way Davos, walking down the street, lowers his gaze toward a child who slips by him, a fleeting reminder of the life he has but still cannot quite hold onto.
Classe tous risques is a brutal, lean, unsentimental film, but one that carries a surprising emotional weight. Sautet never romanticizes Davos’s life, nor does he rush to condemn him; instead, he allows us to sit with the consequences, with the exhaustion, with the small, human moments that flicker in and out as everything closes in. I’m so glad to have finally seen it, and even more glad that it has been given such a beautiful release, one that invites us to look closely at a film that understands, with remarkable clarity, both the cost of a life lived on the run and the quiet ache of what is left behind.
