Classe tous risques

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.

France
1960
108 minutes
Black & White
1.66:1
French
Spine #434

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
PLUS: New essays by director Bertrand Tavernier and Binh, a reprinted interview with Sautet, and a 1962 tribute by Jean-Pierre Melville

New cover by Eric Skillman

DVD 1 Disc $23.96 SRP: $29.95

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
PLUS: New essays by director Bertrand Tavernier and Binh, a reprinted interview with Sautet, and a 1962 tribute by Jean-Pierre Melville

New cover by Eric Skillman

Cast & Credits

Cast

Lino Ventura: Abel Davos
Jean-Paul Belmondo: Eric Stark
Sandra Milo: Liliane
Marcel Dalio: Arthur Gibelin
Michel Ardan: Riton Vintran
Claude Cerval: Raoul Fargier

Credits

Director: Claude Sautet
Based on the novel by: José Giovanni
Adaptation by: Claude Sautet
Adaptation by: José Giovanni
Adaptation by: Pascal Jardin
Dialogue: José Giovanni
Music: Georges Delerue
Cinematography: Ghislain Cloquet
Sets: Rino Mondelini
Sound: Jacques Lébreton
Editing: Albert Jurgenson

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Jean-Paul Belmondo

Actor

When you’re talking about French New Wave cool, it’s Jean-Paul Belmondo who first comes to mind. There are other male icons of the era—Alain Delon, Jean-Pierre Léaud—but with his casual sexiness, cigarette-smoking swagger, and boxer’s mug that only a mother (or actually, as it turns out, everyone) could love, Belmondo stands alone. The son of a famous sculptor, he worked successfully as a comic stage actor for a few years before Jean-Luc Godard cast him in his 1958 short Charlotte et son Jules; during the production, Godard promised the young actor the lead role in his first film. In 1960, Breathless hit: its impact was, of course, seismic, and so was the force of the actor’s breakthrough. In Michel Poiccard, Belmondo created a rapscallion antihero for the ages, couched by Jean-Luc Godard in both romanticism and reality, as though a demigod in a documentary. Superstardom followed fast on the film’s heels. In the early sixties, Belmondo would alternate between New Wave art films (working with Godard again in A Woman Is a Woman and Pierrot le fou) and gangster pictures that showed off his effortless tough-guy bravado (Classe tous risques, Le doulos). Soon enough, he was one of France’s most bankable stars, embarking on a career making comedies and action movies that has already spanned a half century and is still going on.