Watch out, spoilers!
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Watched one of the first films made by Claude Sote, titled in the Russian box office "Hot asphalt", in the original Classe tous risques (Classify all risks), 1960. It was based on the novel by Jose Giovanni (Joseph Damiani), whom we know as the author of novels and screenplays, for example, for such films as “The Hole” (about him not so long ago wrote here), “Two in the city” (which he himself directed), etc. It tells some of the story of Abel Danos, in the film renamed Abel Davos (Lino Ventura). He has long been wanted by the police, for this reason he decides to return from Italy, where he was hiding recently, to Paris, for which he turns to his former accomplices, none of whom is going to help him himself, although their current prosperity, and sometimes life, is based on the help of Abel, they hire a young thief Eric Starc (Jean-Paul Belmondo), buy a used ambulance and send him to Abel. He spends several days in Nice, with an old friend, who also puts him out in the end, as after a shootout at the border, the police comb all the hotels. The biggest difficulty is that moving to France with his wife and two children, as well as his accomplice, they got into a shootout, his wife and friend died, and he stayed with the children, so it became very noticeable, he can not move along with them on the streets. At first everything goes more or less well, Stark picks him up, they are already on their way, but then again the unexpected happens - Stark notices a man and a woman fighting on the side of the road, stops the car, stands up for the woman and finally puts her in the car. They get to Paris, but no one is really going to take Abel in, Stark does. Abel manages to accommodate the children, but he ends up badly.
In principle, the film is very good, good actors, even the script and production for the first independent experience are also not bad. But there are some circumstances that cause some internal resistance. The film does not say anywhere why Abel is so zealously and for many years wanted by the police, there he acts although a bandit, but with some glimpses of humanity - he loves his children, always helped his friends, even throwing overboard the owner of the boat, he throws him a lifeline, thanks to which the police then receives fresh signs of Abel, however, he also kills without hesitation. Eric Stark, being a simple young thief, is also a good guy, he actually helps Abel and it is his Abel who then asks to look after the children he has attached to his father's friend. But in fact, Abel Danos was not only a major bandit, he was one of the executioners of the Paris Gestapo, actively cooperated with them, which is not mentioned in the film, Jose Giovanni met him in prison and, apparently, there imbued with his “noble qualities”, I wonder how he depicted it in the book? That is, we see that if we do not take into account what these people are doing, how many people in the course of their activities they managed to kill, then it turns out that they have a lot of good things. I read that Claude Sote, after learning about who Danos really was, said that if he had known this earlier, he might not have made a film about him. Frankly, this is difficult to believe, because at that time such processes were widely covered in the press, much was written about it. What is interesting is that others (critics, the public) also seemed not to catch the connection of the hero of the film with the bandit, so the film was very popular, however, not immediately, but three years after the release. In the first year he competed with another film with Belmondo - "In the Last Breath".