The Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI present
Classe Tous Risques
When
Wed 6 Sep 2023
Lino Ventura plays a wanted gangster, tapping former colleagues to assist his return to Paris, while Jean-Paul Belmondo is cast as the young criminal who remains loyal when the betrayals start piling up. Sautet skilfully adapts the novel by real-life murderer and Nazi collaborator José Giovanni, who based the leading character on one of his fellow inmates, a one-time Gestapo henchman. Sautet uses genre to paste over a casual ruthlessness that French society wasn’t entirely ready to admit to at the time, the wartime shame of so much dishonourable behaviour still fresh in the cultural memory. With Marcel Dalio.
Also screening on Wed 6 September
Program
Gangsters, Guns and Gauloises: French crime cinema, 1945–60
Quai des Orfèvres (1947) – Wed 30 Aug, 7pm
Razzia Sur la Chnouf (1955) – Wed 30 Aug, 9.05pm
Classes Tous Risques (1960) – Wed 6 Sep, 7pm
Le Trou (1960) – Wed 6 Sep, 8.55pm
Rififi (1955) – Wed 13 Sep, 7pm
Panique (1946) – Wed 13 Sep, 9.10pm
About the program
Although film noir is primarily associated with American cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, France played a key role in its development, both in its appreciation (the term was coined by French critic Nino Frank in 1946) and continuation of the genre. It is perhaps fitting that Rififi (1955), considered by many to be the ultimate French noir, was directed by Jules Dassin, an American exiled in Paris...
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About Melbourne Cinémathèque
Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.
Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven.
