This early Sautet makes us feel compassionate toward the robber/gangster played matter-of-factly (and brilliantly) by Lino Ventura, while abhorred at his cruelty in seeking vengeance. This portrait, filled with honesty and humility, is what makes this film so powerful and timeless.

I offer my friendship rarely. I have reached the age where one can only give it in exchange; the calculation of a miser who wants something for his money. The more valuable the compensation, the more solid the friendship. Sautet, by allowing me to admire him, has left me completely fulfilled. This young man of such maturity has taught us a lesson in discretion and efficiency that does not seem especially valued at a time when we see that only the snobbery imposed by the customers of a five-and-dime make and destroy talents and values (A Woman Is a Woman, Jules and Jim8). If I am certain that in 1965 Claude Sautet will be our greatest filmmaker, it is because, aside from his talent, I admire his quiet courage. And whereas, to make a film, we all know at least a hundred pseudo-directors ready to commit every infamy, Sautet, the false silent type, waits to be inspired to shoot. But when he shoots, he puts his heart into his work.

Never has Lino Ventura shown as much heart as in Classe Tous Risques, despite appearing there alongside a Belmondo unknown, powerful, serious, as true as a true man. The secret of artistic creation remains, along with vulgarity, one of the only two absolute mysteries. It cannot be learned. In cinema or in any other field. In 1896 Picasso had never taken a single lesson, nor had Erroll Garner in 1945. The train station in Milan, the post office in Nice, the Doisy passage… Sautet did not learn these in the films of others. Imagine for an instant that the story took place in the United States or Mexico or Canada, with Robert Ryan and Sinatra, and tell me if, thus transposed, Sautet would not be one of the greats over there. Tell me if he could not have made Some Came Running, Odds Against Tomorrow, The Hustler or The Asphalt Jungle. People often speak of films where the relationship between men, their friendship, have an enormous importance. I believed in the friendship of Abel Davos and Stark, absolutely. It is interior, and does not appear by means of dialogue. The two men's behavior makes explicit their feelings, without either of them having to speak of their friendship. That is partly why I was not able to believe in the friendship of Jules and Jim, even though they speak of it often. Of course, I am not opposing the Sautet technique and the Truffaut technique: absolute classicism and the new cinema are two forms of the same art. It remains to be seen if, in 1965, both will still exist or if one, alone, will still exist.

6 from a letter to Rialto Pictures, August 2005; Woo has called Classe Tous Risques one of his favorite film noirs.
7 originally appeared as ”The Quiet Courage of a Great Filmmaker” in Présence du Cinéma, No. 12, March-April 1962 (translated by Robert Gray, 2005)
8 early 60s New Wave films directed, respectively, by Godard and Truffaut