Here is a deceptively simple, straightforward film about a criminal on the lam: no color, no surround sound, no special effects, but it grabs your attention and won’t let go. Sautet’s naturalistic staging of events on the streets of Milan and France makes it seem palpably real; so do its sudden bursts of violence. Classe Tous Risques deals with friendship, love, sacrifice, and betrayal. Lino Ventura plays the gutsy thief who tries to elude the police, as his wife and young son tag along. Running out of options, he calls on his oldest friends, and they send a hired hand (Jean-Paul Belmondo, fresh from Breathless) to help him out.

One of the things that sets this potent, unsentimental film apart from so much of what we see in movies today is that Ventura doesn’t seem to be acting at all. We believe him completely...and we understand that there is something serious at stake here. He is fighting for his very survival—and that of his family. (No movie-star posing, no postmodern distance from the material in this vintage French crime film, merci.)

Classe Tous Risques (which literally means Tourist Class but is also a colloquialism that translates to something like Double Indemnity) is playing for one week at the NuArt Theater in Los Angeles beginning January 6. (New Yorkers have already had their chance to see it at Film Forum). As the latest revival release from Rialto Pictures, it will then make its way around the country to Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Cambridge, Massachusetts, among other cities. You can check out a schedule at www.rialtopictures.com. You’ll also find interesting background information on the film and read interviews with some of its admirers, including John Woo and Bertrand Tavernier.

 © 2006 JessieFilm, Inc.