STUDIO: Criterion
RELEASE DATE: June 17, 2008
STARRING: Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo
WRITTEN BY: Claude Sautet, Jose Giovanni, and Pascal Jardin
DIRECTED BY: Claude Sautet
FEATURES: New, restored high-definition digital transfer
Excerpts from Claude Sautet ou la magie invisible, a 2003 documentary on the director by N.T. Binh and Dominique Rabourdin
Interview with Classe tous risques novelist and screenwriter Jose Giovannir
Archival interview footage featuring actor Lino Ventura discussing his career
Original French and U.S. theatrical trailers
PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by director Bertrand Tavernier and Binh, a reprinted interview with Sautet, and a 1962 tribute by Jean-Pierre Melville

Have you ever seen a French New Wave gangster movie? They're kind of mesmerizing. Imagine a flick with all the tenets of the world of French cinema in the late '50s and early '60s - small budgets, fluid camera movement, existential themes - but with shoot-outs and car chases. The gangster movie is such a seminal part of film history that seeing a French one from the era of the New Wave, a movement that was trying to go against the traditional expectations of film, is something every film historian should see. Claude Sautet's Classe Tous Risques came out in 1960, at the peak of the movement, and right after Jean-Luc Godard had made the classic of the genre, Breathless. (In fact, this film was the follow-up of the star of that one, Jean-Paul Belmondo). Translated as "Consider All Risks", Classe Tous Risques is a challenging and sometimes overly distant film about a pair of gangsters on the run, but it fell beneath the popularity of the French New Wave and was largely ignored. It was even banned in a few countries in the '60s.

Lino Ventura plays a mobster named Abel Davos, a wanted man who is trying to get from Italy to Paris. Davos has been hiding out in Milan for almost a decade and he's trying to sneak back to Paris with his wife, children, and guardian Eric Stark (Belmondo). Director Claude Sautet (Un couer en hiver) tells a very unapologetic and dark story that turns the genre on its head a little bit by giving audiences an anti-hero who may be a killer but is also a friend, husband, and father. Abel just wants to get his family home and the rest of the world is completely against him. Sautet has made a "one man vs. the world" film that's consistently dark and ruthless. You won't see many movies that are five decades old that would probably be softened by Hollywood if they were remade today but Classe Tous Risques feels like it's too dark for modern audiences (a beach shoot-out is particularly shocking). Sautet's title may translate to "Consider All Risks" but his film is implying that everyone and everything is a risk. Your partner, your friend, your family are all a risk. Only alone are you truly safe. Classe Tous Risques is yet another lost classic brought back to life by Criterion, a company who has had an amazing summer with great titles like Mafioso and Blast of Silence. Risques isn't quite as good as those two titles, but that doesn't make it any less worth your time.

One of the hallmarks of Criterion is the fact that they produce, unquestionably, the best video transfers on the market. At first, Classe Tous Risques looks a little rough around the edges, but then you realize that it's 48 YEARS OLD. There's very little visual noise and the anamorphic transfer is fantastic. You won't see many films that are even two or three decades old, much less FIVE, that look this crystal clear. The special features on Classe Tous Risques follow the pattern of the recent Criterion classics pulled from the vaults. Naturally, it can be hard to get together special features for a lot of these unheralded films, but Criterion has a way of finding extras that expand the experience of a film instead of just using them as supplemental material. For Classe, it would have been nice to have a commentary or two from a film historian or critic, but they did find some featurette/interviews and even some great essays included in the notes of the DVD case. There is a small documentary called "Claude Sautet ou la magie invisible" that is quite good but incredibly short. Also included is a brief interview with the novelist and screenwriter Jose Giovanni. There are also about 14 minutes of archival interview footage with Ventura and two trailers that run about 6 minutes. As you can tell, it's not an overwhelming collection of special features, but all of the interviews are interesting enough that they don't feel like overkill. You'll wish they were all longer. Even better are the essays in the notes booklet, which include new work by director Bertrand Tavernier and writer N.T. Binh, a reprinted interview with Sautet, and a tribute by Jean-Pierre Melville from 1962.