Claude Sautet's "Classe Tous Risques" is the kind of French movie that makes you want to throw on your trench coat, light up a cigarette and shoot somebody. Originally released in 1960, it was lost in the frenzy of the Nouvelle Vague, which made its straightforward use of genre look a bit old-fashioned. Back then, a dubbed version (titled "The Big Risk" and distributed by United Artists) played briefly in American theaters, but now, thanks to Rialto Pictures, English speakers can see a handsome restored print with newly translated subtitles. It is worth seeking out, not only because "Classe Tous Risques" represents a missing piece of film history - a link between the great postwar policiers and the brooding 1960's gangster dramas of Jean-Pierre Melville - but because it is a tough and touching exploration of honor and friendship among thieves.

Mr. Sautet, who died in 2000, is better known for delicate psychological dramas like "A Heart in Winter" (1992) and "Nelly and Mr. Arnaud" (1995), which would appear, at first glance, to have little in common with this underworld chronicle. But as the lean, efficiently linear plot unfolds, nuances of feeling and motivation seem to collect between the lines and around the edges of the frame. The story, adapted from a novel by José Giovanni, begins in Milan, where Abel Davos (Lino Ventura), an exiled French mobster, is about to return home with his wife, his two young sons and his partner, Raymond Naldi (Stan Krol). After putting the wife and kids on a train to Ventimiglia, Davos and Naldi commit a robbery on a city street in broad daylight, and then head for France in a series of stolen cars, a bus and a commandeered pleasure boat.

But the jauntiness of this adventure is shadowed by a sense of sadness and fatigue, borne out in a sudden eruption of lethal violence. The heaviness of Davos's situation seems to reside in Mr. Ventura's meaty, rough-hewn face and solid frame. His size and strength make him curiously vulnerable, and before long he finds a perfect foil in the silky, slender person of Jean-Paul Belmondo. Mr. Belmondo, amazingly youthful and on the cusp of international stardom, plays Eric Stark, a freelancer dispatched by Davos's Parisian buddies to escort their long-lost comrade from Nice to Paris.

The sending of a surrogate to fulfill their obligations turns out to be the film's moral crux. Davos's old friends are for various reasons disinclined to risk their own safety to help him, a caution he regards as a mortal betrayal. Stark's instincts are more generous, and he and Davos form a friendship founded on a shared code. Their bond is conveyed through exquisite understatement on the part of both the actors and the director. These are not the kind of guys who go around hugging each other, which makes their evident love all the more poignant. (The manly chastity of this affection is guaranteed by Liliane, an itinerant actress who falls for Stark, and who is played, with luscious irrelevance, by Sandra Milo.)

The relationship of these two men turns the movie, which never departs from the conventions of its genre, toward a rough, matter-of-fact profundity. It ends cleanly, almost with a shrug, but leaves you pondering the nature of loyalty, obligation and revenge. Mr. Ventura and Mr. Belmondo would go on to play tough guys and seducers of various kinds, but there is something especially rare and fine about this collaboration, in which the tough guys, without acknowledging as much, in effect seduce each other.
Classe Tous Risques
Directed by Claude Sautet; written (in French and Italian, with English subtitles) by Mr. Sautet, José Giovanni and Pascal Jardin, based on the novel by Mr. Giovanni; director of photography, Ghislain Cloquet; edited by Albert Jurgenson; music by Georges Delerue; produced by Jean Darvey; released by Rialto Pictures. Running time: 103 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Lino Ventura (Abel Davos), Jean-Paul Belmondo (Eric Stark), Sandra Milo (Liliane), Marcel Dalio(Arthur Gibelin), Michel Ardan (Riton Vintran), Stan Krol (Raymond Naldi) and Claude Cerval (Raoul Fargier).