When looking back to the 1960s, people talk only of the New Wave. Classe Tous Risques was among the films that were unappreciated; many critics ignored it completely. In the last line of my review of Classe Tous Risques (the first I ever published), I wrote, "Some patronizing people think it is a B film, but a B like Boetticher is better than a A like Allegret" (“un B comme Boetticher vaut mieux qu'un A comme Allegret”).2 Classe Tous Risques is not a B film. It is one of the best French gangster films, tense and warm, elliptical and human, which revealed Jean-Paul Belmondo before Breathless3 (the way he delivers with a touching smile "ce que j'ai de bien c'est mon gauche" 4 is unforgettable). Based on a very good book by José Giovanni (whose other books and screenplays include Becker's Le Trou and Melville's Le Deuxième Souffle), it is also a beautiful friendship story with Hawksian undertones. I have never forgotten the superb opening of the film, the very moving first voiceover, the beautifully filmed robbery (which even impressed Robert Bresson), the abrupt, unsentimental and poignant ending. And in between, many original and inspired moments: a meeting in a church, the relationship between Lino Ventura and a little maid, which really deal, beyond the rules of the genre, with "les choses de la vie."5

1 from a letter to Rialto Pictures, October 2005
2 Budd Boetticher (1916-2001), writer/director of action pictures, most famous for a series of superior B Westerns (as well as one great bullfighting picture). Yves Allégret (1907-1987), director who became the poster child for the "cinéma de qualité," a traditional style abhorred by the Cahiers du Cinéma critics.
3 The two films were made and released back-to-back. Principal photography on Breathless was completed in September 1959, while Classe Tous Risques began shooting in October. Breathless was released in March 1960, with Classe following in April.
4 “the best thing about me is my left”
5 Literally, "the little things in life," but also a reference to Sautet's popular 1970 film "Les choses de la vie," starring Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider, the first of his slice-of-bourgeois-life chamber films.