Classe Tous Risques at NCMA Tonight (10/10)

October, 10, 2008 , by Vince

The title of the film refers to a type of insurance policy, à la Double Indemnity, but is also a pun on “tourist class”. Two tough guys execute a broad daylight payroll heist on the streets of Milan. They return to France after hiding in Italy for nearly a decade. One of them realizes there’s a life beyond the milieu. This film was one of the “re-discovered” greats of 2005. Classe Tous Risques is an intimate study of the underworld set at the end of their rope.

Its the first teaming of two of the French cinema’s greatest icons, Lino Ventura (Army of Shadows, Touchez Pas au Grisbi) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless). Breathless, directed by French New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard, directed another movie called Contempt, whose composer, Georges Delerue, also scored this film. Contemporary French director Robert Bresson’s (Au Hasard Balthazar, Mouchette) cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet was also utilized for this film. Sandra Milo (later to star in Fellini’s 8 1/2) and Marcel Dalio (Grand Illusion, Casablanca) also make their mark in this film. Jean-Pierre Melville said of this film and its director: “Imagine for an instant that the story took place in the U.S., Mexico or Canada, with Robert Ryan and Sinatra, and tell me if, thus transposed, Sautet would not be one of the greats over there. The trainstation in Milan,the post office in Nice, the Doisy passage…Sautet did not learn these in the films of others…”

John Woo (The Killer, Hard Boiled) said that “this early Sautet film makes us feel compassionate toward the robber/gangster played matter-of-factly (and brilliantly) by Lino Ventura, while abhorred at his cruelty in seeking vengeance. This portrait, filled with honesty and humility, is what makes this film so powerful and timeless.”

Film Curator Laura Boyes offers us her perspective:

The French adored American film noir—they coined the phrase, after all. Classe tous risques was based on a hard-boiled crime novel by José Giovanni, who was sent to jail as part of a criminal gang, and at one time was sentenced to death. He knew what he was talking about! You can see in the trailer what director Claude Sautet describes as “a thriller of a kind that did not exist in France at that time . . . a crime film heavily influenced by American B movies, but at the same time, very French, with a rhythm of tenderness and violence.”

A daring daylight robbery goes awry, and macho bravado intersects with tender emotions. Ventura (Army of Shadows) is a hardened hood on the lam, aided by the youthful, charismatic Belmondo, who shot Classe back-to-back with his iconic role in Godard’s Breathless. Fans of The Sopranos will recognize this view of criminals as both ordinary and supremely vicious. Lisa Swartzbaum in Entertainment Weekly raved about the revival: “. . . a doozy of a French gangster pic . . . a neorealist, neo-noir black-and-white masterpiece.”

VIEW THE TRAILER HERE

Classe tous risques
(1960) Directed by Claude Sautet. Lino Ventura, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Sandra Milo. (103 min.)
General public: $5 per film, $35 for series pass
Students, Museum members, Cinema Inc. and Galaxy Cinema Members: $3.50 per film, $25 for series pass
Museum Box Office: (919) 715-5923