Like "Rififi" and "Touchez-Pas Au Grisbi" before it, New York's Film Forum unearthed and restored this terrific 1960 thriller by director Claude Sautet ("Un Couer en Hiver.") With surprising warmth, Lino Ventura, the hulking ex-wrestler who worked his way from thuggish supporting roles to one of France's most beloved stars, plays a gangster at the end of his rope. No matter how threatening his physique, his eyes always betray more emotion than we're used to from heavies in crime flicks.
After hiding out in Italy for a decade, Abel (Ventura) attempts one last heist to fund his family's return to France, where he is wanted for murder. That's right, his family: the bandit has a wife and two sons now, and they complicate his last job, a split-second robbery on the crowded streets of Milan. Together with an accomplice, they make it to a French beach, where Abel's hope for a quiet future is mercilessly gunned down by the coast guard. The ensuing cross-country crime spree gets ever more desperate, especially when Abel finds out that the members of his old gang would rather not risk their comfortable lives for him any longer. Instead, they send a young bruiser: Jean-Paul Belmondo, nimble and lithe like in Godard's "Breathless" (which was shot right before "Classe.")
"Classe Tous Risques" is touching and merciless at the same time, always a step or two ahead of the audience. The film heaps on all the traditional genre elements: slimy private investigators, road blocks, revenge, betrayal, hair-breadth getaways, botched crimes, scrumptious gangster molls, a two-timing fence, and all the tough-guy bravado you could wish for. What sticks with you most, though, are the quiet moments--the sharply drawn characters, the abortive father-son relationship between Ventura and Belmondo, and a melancholic undercurrent about lives wasted by crime that culminates in a jaw-droppingly matter-of-fact ending.
