Tonight's movie was a really good French Crime Thriller called "Classe Tous Risques" (1960). What would that translate to? "The Risky Class"? That's my best guess. I found the movie once again as a byproduct of a Library search for another subject. I think I was searching for movies by Jean-Pierre Melville, who is a great director of French Crime Cinema. At any rate, "Classe Tous Risques" came up in the search, and it was on Criterion, and it was in black and white, so I knew I had to order it. It was directed by a guy named Claude Sautet, yet another French director that I hadn't heard of. I've discovered a few of these guys recently, and it just goes to show you that there is more to French Cinema than the New Wave of Godard and Truffaut. There were directors before them , like Melville especially, who made movies in the Hollywood style, and while Melville remains well known, it seems unfortunate to me that a director like Sautet is barely heard of.
The movie is a straight crime thriller rather than a Noir, and it has elements that you don't often see in such movies. Lino Ventura, an actor of Italian heritage who lived in and made movies in France, stars as a Gangster who is on the run. He has been tried in an Italian court for his crimes there, and has been sentenced, in absentia, to death. As the movie opens, he is on the move through the streets of Milan. But he is not alone. He is fleeing with his wife and two small boys, and also his Right Hand Man, a tall, tough looking guy in a suit. Ventura is broke and needs a quick influx of cash to take his family back to France and away from the heat of the Italian cops, so he and his Hit Man spot a couple of bank couriers carrying a satchel in the middle of a crowded city street, and they mug them. Now they have some dough with which to escape, and here begins the story.
I won't tell you much more, but this is the story of a man on the run, so you can estimate what might happen in such a scenario. He does get to France, and there he has some fellow Mobsters he can call on for favors, because he was their leader. But he has his children with him, and though his fellow crooks pay him lip service, in private they are less than committed to helping him. One is a mutineer who thinks Ventura is more trouble than he is worth. Ventura does have one ally; a young iconoclastic thief played by French Uber-Star Jean-Paul Belmondo. He has been hired by the mobsters to transport Ventura from Nice to Paris. Along the way, they bond, and an unbreakable alliance is formed. Belmondo becomes the only one Lino Ventura can trust. The French police are now closing in. Ventura doesn't know what to do with his kids. The mobsters are feeling the heat and making deals with the cops.
Things are not going well. Crime does not pay.
But what does pay is shooting a crime movie in excellent black and white, so that you create a Time Capsule of 1960 Paris and Milan, the way the streets and buildings looked then, the way people dressed and moved. Everybody smoked. People swerved scooters through traffic. Things were happening, but the future had yet to take off, rock and roll had begun but was still four years away from changing the world. This is something I love so much about this type of film, shot on location at a given time - and pre-CGI - is that a historical reality is preserved. A "look" is preserved, retained, that we can't see anymore because styles have changed, streets have changed, cities and culture change over time.
You could almost fit this movie into the Neo-Realism movement of French/Italian Cinema that had a brief run from the late 40s to the early 50s, just because of it's look......
And so, two big Thumbs Up for "Classe Tous Risques". Another French Crime Classic that you should see that is in the same vein is called "Touchez Pas au Grisbi" (1954) starring Jean Gabin. Don't ask me to translate that title, haha, I don't stand a chance. But man, is it ever a classic.
That's all I know for tonight. Still a little groggy from the time change. Reading my "Forbidden Archaeology" book, looking up the Calaveras Skull on Google. Gotta get some new sneakers tomorrow because I've been wearing my hiking boots the last couple weeks and they are not meant for walking on concrete. Sore shins and heels result.
The new Judas Priest is formulaic, but still very good. I recommend listening to it in the background while you do something else, like make a sandwich or read "Forbidden Archaeology". If you listen casually instead of intently, and without expecting a Judas Priest Masterwork 35 years down the line, you will be pleasantly surprised.
That's my review. Listen to it while making a sandwich.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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