Class tous risques
July 2008 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

When it was first released, this film was overshadowed by Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, which made Jean-Paul Belmondo into a major star. In fact, at the time the Godard movie came out, I was haunting the art-house theater in Durham, North Carolina. I saw every movie showed, and Class tous risques (first released in the US as The Big Risk) was absent. In retrospect, it seems a very good movie with many memorable moments -- a successful blending of the gangster and film noir genres.

Italian actor Lino Ventura, who except on one occasion exclusively played in French movies, stars as Abel Davos, a mob boss and criminal down on his luck in Italy. He has a wife and two young boys in tow. Thérèse Davos (Simone France) is killed in the first reel of the movie, which leaves Davos in immediate anguish and great concern for his sons. He decides to try to make it to France where he has friends and connections. The latter don’t feel like they can help him directly, so they hire a young thief named Eric Stark (Belmondo) to pick him up and drive him to France.

Since Davos’s partner was also killed in the early shootout, he bonds with Stark and they become good friends. Davos finds a home for his children and then plans one last robbery to get him enough money to provide for the boys and ensure his getaway abroad. He’s driven, as are all the characters in this movie, by the plot and by circumstances beyond his control. He’s a very volatile man. One of the most notable characteristics of this film are its short, fitful moments of violence. The anger and determination to kill seem to come from almost nowhere and go away almost as rapidly as they appear.

Ventura played a lot of gangsters in his career, at the risk of becoming type cast, so he seems very comfortable as Davos. Belmondo has boyish charm and convinces one that he is really a nice guy at heart. He just happened to become an occupational thief. The rest of the cast is ideal, with every actor exactly right for his part. One of the most memorable scenes for me was the one in which Ventura, knowing he will be pursued, instructs his two sons to walk ten yards behind him at all times and should they see a group of men surround him, they must run away.

Criterion has become the master when it comes to black-and-white photography, and Class tous risques is given handsome treatment. Detail is as good as it gets for regular DVD. The opening scene in a bustling train station is alive with minute detail. If Criterion transfers this film to Blu-ray, the opening should be eye-popping. The contrast is excellent, blacks are solid, and shadow detail is good. The white electronic subtitles are easy to read yet do not detract from the picture as the yellow ones often do. The aspect ratio is 1:66:1, which due to the excessive over scan on most monitors, will probably appear as 16:9. The mono sound is exceptionally robust, full-bodied, and clean.

There are not as many extras on this release as for the usual Criterion title, but they are good ones. There are excerpts from a video biography of Claude Sautet and archival footage of Ventura discussing the film and his career. Most interesting, though, is an interview with José Giovanni, author of the screenplay, which is based on his own novel. Giovanni had been a prisoner on death row who was pardoned and then began writing successful novels, most often with fictionalized plots that had a basis in his real life. There are also two trailers, one made for France and the other for the US.

Classe tous risques is a taut and exciting movie. I had not known it before this release, but it is now sure to go on any recommended list I might make of films in either genre to which it is pertinent.

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