The Big Risk

Abel Davos, a gangster who has been hiding in Italy for ten years, has been sentenced to death in absentia in France. He carries out a payroll robbery in broad daylight in Milan and tries to get back to France with his wife and two children. His wife is killed on the way, and when he reaches Paris he discovers his old friends do not want him. The film is not interested in the robbery. It is interested in solidarity collapsing: the old partners will not answer the telephone, offer money instead, and the only person who helps is a young man who does not know him. It shows the gangster world as built on calculation rather than courage. The form is plain and everyday: the hero carries his children, waits for a bus, looks for medicine. The action is short and unshowy. It is Claude Sautet's second film; the source is José Giovanni's novel, and Giovanni wrote the screenplay with Pascal Jardin. Lino Ventura plays Abel and Jean-Paul Belmondo the young man who helps him. Belmondo made this straight after Breathless and both came out the same year; it is the first time Ventura and Belmondo worked together. Who it is for: viewers who like French gangster cinema and plain storytelling. Who it is not for: anyone expecting action. The film is built entirely on waiting, carrying and being refused.