Claude Sautet

Classe tous risques

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 throat-grabbing, soul-searching journey through the postwar Parisian underworld. A character study of a career criminal at the end of his rope, this rugged noir from Claude Sautet is a highlight of 1960s French cinema.

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Film Info

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

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • Excerpts from Claude Sautet, ou La magie invisible, a 2003 documentary on the director by N. T. Binh and Dominique Rabourdin
  • Interview with Classe tous risques novelist and coscreenwriter José Giovanni
  • Archival interview footage featuring actor Lino Ventura discussing his career
  • Trailers
  • PLUS: Essays by filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier and Binh, a reprinted interview with Sautet, and a 1962 tribute by Jean-Pierre Melville

    Cover by Eric Skillman

Purchase Options

Coming soon, available Mar 17, 2026

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • Excerpts from Claude Sautet, ou La magie invisible, a 2003 documentary on the director by N. T. Binh and Dominique Rabourdin
  • Interview with Classe tous risques novelist and coscreenwriter José Giovanni
  • Archival interview footage featuring actor Lino Ventura discussing his career
  • Trailers
  • PLUS: Essays by filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier and Binh, a reprinted interview with Sautet, and a 1962 tribute by Jean-Pierre Melville

    Cover by Eric Skillman
Classe tous risques
Cast
Lino Ventura
Abel Davos
Sandra Milo
Liliane
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Eric Stark
Marcel Dalio
Arthur Gibelin
Michel Ardan
Henri Vintran
Claude Cerval
Raoul Fargier
Jacques Dacqmine
Blot
Simone France
Thérèse Davos
Michèle Méritz
Sophie Fargier
Stan Krol
Raymond Naldi
Évelyne Ker
Gibelin’s daughter
Betty Schneider
The maid
France Asselin
Denise Vintran
Jean-Pierre Zola
Agency director
Sylvain Levignac
Jacques Imbert
Jeanne Pérez
Jacqueline Chapuis
René Génin
Chapuis
Charles Blavette
Bénazet
Philippe March
Jean Martin
Corrado Guarducci
Ferucci
Robert Desnoux
Pierrot
Credits
Director
Claude Sautet
Based on the novel by
José Giovanni
Adaptation
Claude Sautet
Adaptation
José Giovanni
Adaptation
Pascal Jardin
Dialogue
José Giovanni
Music
Georges Delerue
Cinematography
Ghislain Cloquet
Sets
Rino Mondelini
Sound
Jacques Lebreton
Editing
Albert Jurgenson

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Jean-Paul Belmondo

Actor

Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Belmondo

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.

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