CLASSE TOUS RISQUES

Franse gangsterbaas Abel Davos is al een decennium lang op de vlucht in Italië om een doodstraf te ontlopen in zijn vaderland Frankrijk. Maar wanneer de politie hem eindelijk op het spoor komt, vraagt hij zijn oude criminele vrienden om hulp. Het is echter een onbekommerde onbekende die uiteindelijk redding zal brengen. Dit regiedebuut van Claude Sautet zette ook Belmondo op de kaart en kwam uit in hetzelfde jaar als Belmondo’s doorbraakrol in A BOUT DE SOUFFLE.

"What made Sautet- a man who wasn’t that drawn to directing-happy to take on Classe tous risques was its very physicality. In the film’s magnificently brooding opening scenes Davos (Ventura) and Raymond (Kroll) are arranging for Davos’s wife Thérèse and two boys to slip by watching police and leave Milan by train for the border. At this point-in a film where a huge backstory is mostly ignored-Davos, former head of a tight Paris gang of thieves, has been in the run for years and must leave Italy, where the net is tightening around him, and get back to Paris. Once the family have been safely entrained, though, Davos and Raymond turn to getting some money. Watching Ventura and Krol prowling the street as they wait for their moment to pounce on a pair of bank couriers, you have the same feeling of deep authenticity as when watching an American noir, but somehow deeper still. We know these men are outside society; their predatory stalking movement and hulking brutishness tell us everything about how they must live. Sautet, in a slightly dismissive statement, talked years later about how he believed in “pure cinema” and so was determined to keep dialogue to the absolute minimum."
Nick James in: Sight and Sound, Vol. 23, Issue 10, October 2013, p. 37