I love when a movie doesn’t play around. I’m talking about a movie where the situation is so dire and beyond salvation that the only place for the protagonist to go is down, down, down. These kinds of movies can’t sit still for a moment because something, be it a threat, a deadline, the police, a killer, or self-destruction, looms so large over the characters and film that they have no choice but to hurtle forward. I don’t know any better way to describe it than electric. Horror, crime, and noir movies are the ones that strike this chord better than any other genres. In this instance, I’m talking about Claude Sautet’s lean and mean French noir Classe Tous Risques. Previously released by Criterion in 2008, Classe Tous Risques has a new 4K facelift, making it look and feel as fresh as ever.
Fugitive Abel Davos (Lino Ventura) can feel the heat closing in on him from the start of the film. The gangster has been on the run for so long that his life has become one where looking over his shoulder is his default position. A life on the run is all his two sons know. Classe Tous Risques (The Big Risk in English) opens with Abel’s life entering the home stretch. Against better judgement, Abel has snuck his family into Paris despite the long-standing promise of the death sentence that sent him on the run in the first place. The only questions the movie asks are how long can Abel outrun his pursuers and how many people will be collateral damage.
The first act plays like a sprinter firing out of the blocks. Abel and longtime friend Raymond Naldi (Stan Krol) pull a no-frills street jacking and take off on foot with a bag of cash in hand. They run, they drive, it’s a thrilling chase sequence, one marked by small moments of joy between the two friends. An acknowledgement of all they’ve done together and how their number is almost up, they still feel the thrill of the chase. For as haphazard as their robbery is, it does offer them a fleeting moment of happiness, and it’s something I can’t shake as I think about the film. One of the marvels of Classe Tous Risques is how the film almost relishes in its own darkness. There’s something thrilling about a film so clear in its ambition and vision, even for films without much joy within the story.
After a breathless opening that leaves Abel more alone than he’s even been, the film downshifts as it settles into its somberness. It also marks the entry point for two of the film’s most important characters in Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Liliane (Sandra Milo). Eric is younger and earlier in his criminal career than Abel, but the parallel drawn by Sautet and credited writers Sautet, Pascal Jardin, and José Giovanni (whose novel the film is based on) is apparent. The similarities between Abel and Eric get stronger when Liliane joins them. She’s an actress and when Abel and Eric come across her she’s in the midst of a roadside argument with a man that is a few heartbeats away from turning very ugly. So Eric plays the hero and saves her and the two quickly fall in love. For the audience this is like looking into the past at a younger Abel and his wife. For Eric and Liliane, they’re too smitten to see that Abel represents an ominous look at their future if they stay the course. Milo and Belmondo are excellent here. It’s hard to successfully pull off a love-at-first-sight dynamic, but I fully bought into their relationship when they first locked eyes.
With love in the air and the thrill of being on the run, it’s easy to see how someone like Abel (and Eric and Liliane) could let themselves get caught up in this life even if the promise of a happy ending is a mirage. Once the thrill sours and the love is gone, all that’s left is the emptiness of a life spent running from threats. There is no happiness, real happiness, awaiting Abel anywhere. The hollowness of his life is apparent from the beginning and hollows out further as the movie goes. He knows this. From the start of the film he’s constantly coaching his kids on how to carry themselves as if he isn’t around and what to do when the inevitable day that he isn’t around arrives. Sautet and his co-writers, Giovanni in particular, make clear that any happiness in this life is fleeting, while loneliness and despair are all but guaranteed. The fatalism of Classe Tous Risques is the thing I can’t shake. It comes preloaded with any noir worth its weight, but Sautet elevates it, making it feel as fresh and bitter in 2026 as I imagine it was 60 years ago.
