Jean Pierre Melville's first crime film Bob Le Flambeur (1956) was the story of an aging criminal and compulsive gambler. Like Melville's later masterworks, such as Stool Pigeon (Le Doulos,1963) and Le Deuxieme Souffle (Second Breath,1966) it is an intense and intimate, almost microscopic examination of a shifting web of friendship, allegiance and betrayal, in which each gesticulation and word is of significance, At the same time, Melville creates an extraordinarily mesmeric, poetic though never simply picturesque vision of night life in Montmartre - an attempt to recapture the atmosphere of pre-war Paris.
In 1957, Arsene Lupin came to the screen in Becker's The Adventures of Arsene Lupin scripted by Albert Simonin, author of Touchez pas au Grisbi (Hands off the Loot) and of the Parisian thriller Une balle dans la Canon ( A Slug in the Heater,1958) filmed by Charles Gerard and Michel DeVille. In 1959, Claude Sautet wanted to create a role for Lino Ventura, whom he had admired in Touches pas au Grisbi and Le Fauve Est Lache , enhanced Ventura's popularity, Later that year he went on to star with Jean-Paul Belmondo in Sautet's first feature - Classe Tous Risques ( The Big Risk,1960) the film's cinematic purity and efficacy would hark back Howard Hawks, Sautet's most profound influence. Sautet even deemed Classe Tous Risques a Western in business suits, in that, like many Westerns, the film focuses primarily on simple relationships and elementary characters caught up in a train of events beyond their comprehension or control.