Classe tous risques

Classe tous risques (; literally "All-Risk Class", but also a pun on the French expression "Classe Touriste", Economy Class), which was first released in the United States as The Big Risk, is a 1960 French-Italian gangster film directed by Claude Sautet and starring Lino Ventura, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Sandra Milo. An adaptation of the novel of the same name by José Giovanni, who collaborated with Sautet and Pascal Jardin on the screenplay, the film tells the story of a French mobster on the run with his family, who returns to Paris with help from a new criminal acquaintance and confronts the members of his old gang. Now widely considered a masterpiece, at the time of its release, the film was somewhat overshadowed by the French New Wave. However, it did influence French cinema, especially Jean-Pierre Melville's subsequent work. Plot Years after gangster Abel Davos fled France with his wife, Thérèse, and baby son, his money is running out and the Italian police are closing in on him, so he decides that, although he was tried in absentia and sentenced to death in France, it is time to return home. He puts Thérèse and his two sons (the younger of which was born after Abel went on the run) on a train to Ventimiglia at the Milano Centrale railway station and then, with his friend Raymond Naldi, robs a pair of bank couriers before heading to Ventimiglia himself, barely making it past a roadblock on the way out of Milan. The robbery did not yield as much money as expected, so, to enter France, Abel steals a boat in Sanremo and lands with his family and Raymond at night in Menton, but they are surprised by two customs officers, and there is a shootout. Raymond, Thérèse, and both of the officers are killed, setting off a massive police manhunt. Abel and his boys make it to Nice, where Abel calls Henri "Riton" Vintran, a member of his old gang, in Paris and asks him to contact their former partners Raoul Fargier and Jean "Jeannot" Martin and come get him. Although Abel once provided the money for Riton to open his bistro and got Fargier, who now owns a hotel, out of jail, neither man wants to risk his now-comfortable life by getting too involved with Abel, and they convince Jeannot, who would like to retrieve Abel, that he should not go either, as he is out on bail. Instead, they buy an ambulance and recruit Éric Stark, a good-natured young gangster who is a stranger to them, to do the job.