Classe tous risques: Beautiful Friendships
by Jun 16, 2008I have a particular, even personal, relationship with this film. I experienced a shock of discovery when I first saw it and felt driven to write my first . . .
Synopsis
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.
Cast
| Abel Davos | Lino Ventura |
| Eric Stark | Jean-Paul Belmondo |
| Liliane | Sandra Milo |
| Arthur Gibelin | Marcel Dalio |
| Riton Vintran | Michel Ardan |
| Raoul Fargier | Claude Cerval |
Credits
| Director | Claude Sautet |
| Based on the novel by | José Giovanni |
| Adaptation by | Claude Sautet, José Giovanni and Pascal Jardin |
| Dialogue | José Giovanni |
| Music | Georges Delerue |
| Cinematography | Ghislain Cloquet |
| Sets | Rino Mondelini |
| Sound | Jacques Lébreton |
| Editing | Albert Jurgenson |
Disc 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
From the Current
Classe tous risques:
Looking for Claude Sautet
by
Jun 16, 2008
Claude Sautet occupies a unique place in French cinema. Although he directed some of the biggest hits of the seventies and worked with some of the biggest stars, few critics considered him an “auteur” in his lifetime. Paradoxically, it was at the end of his career, a time when most directors . . .
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