Classe Tous Risques

Classe Tous Risques
Directed by Claude Sautet
Produced by Robert Amon
Jean Darvey
Written by José Giovanni (novel)
Claude Sautet
Pasqual Jardin
Starring Lino Ventura
Sandra Milo
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Music by Georges Delerue
Cinematography Ghislain Cloquet
Edited by Albert Jurgenson
Distributed by Cinédis
Release dates
 1960
Running time
 104 minutes
Country France
Language French
Box office 1,726,839 admissions (France)[1]
Classe Tous Risques (Consider All Risks, first released in the U.S. as The Big Risk) is a 1960 French Italian International co-production black-and-white gangster film directed by Claude Sautet and starring Lino Ventura, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Sandra Milo. Now widely considered a masterpiece, at the time of its release it was somewhat overshadowed by the French New Wave. It did however influence the French cinema, especially Jean-Pierre Melville's work.   It is an adaptation of a novel by José Giovanni, telling the story of Abel Davos (Ventura), French mobster trying to make his way from Italy through Marseille to Paris and hunted by the police, and Eric Stark (Belmondo), who turns out to be the only person willing to help Davos.

The Abel Davos character is based on the real life Abel Danos (alias "le Mammouth" because of his girth) who José Giovanni met in prison. From 1941 to 1944 Danos was a henchman for the French Gestapo run by Henri Lafont et Pierre Bonny. Danos was sentenced to death and shot for Collaboration on March 13, 1952.

The film was banned in Finland during the sixties.

Kenneth Turran in a review of 2006 for the Los Angeles Times wrote, "To come across Classe Tous Risques is like discovering a bottle of marvelous French wine you didn't remember you had, opening it and finding it every bit as delicious as its reputation promised."

References

  1. ↑ Box office information for film at Box Office Story

External links