Gangsters, murder, sex and intrigue on the French Riviera!  René Clément’s overheated thriller touches all the bases, dropping Alain Delon’s fugitive playboy into a chateau henhouse with the seductive Lola Albright and Jane Fonda. It’s a twisted tale directed in high style, with Delon caught in a very Tight Spot but thinking he can outsmart his two female companions. All it needed was a character we really care about. Gaumont’s fine remaster gives us the show in two language versions.

Joy House (les félins)
Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1964 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen 1:85 widescreen / 97 min. / les félins; The Velvet CageStreet Date May 30, 2023 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Jane Fonda, Alain Delon, Lola Albright, Carl Studer, Sorrell Booke, André Oumansky, Arthur Howard, George Gaynes, Annette Poivre, Berett Arcaya, Marc Mazza, Jacques Bézard.
Cinematography: Henri Decaë
Production Designer: Jean André
Costume Design: Pierre Balmain
Film Editor: Fedora Zincone
Original Music: Lalo Schifrin
Assistant directors: Bernard Paul, Costa Gavras
Written by René Clément, Pascal Jardin, Charles Williams ‘dialogues’ by Jardin & Williams, from the novel Joy House by Day Keene
Produced by Jacques Bar
Directed by René Clément

We’ve wanted to see René Clément’s Joy House (les félins) for quite a while — we like much of what we’ve seen from that director, and the film’s cast is enticing in itself. The underrated Lola Albright is always good, and young Jane Fonda makes her first appearance in a French movie. Alain Delon arrives having already starred in what is perhaps director Clément’s very best picture, the superior Patricia Highsmith adaptation Purple Noon.

Along with many other established French directors, René Clément became a punching bag for the New Wave critics: in promoting their own directorial careers, they attacked almost all traditional French moviemaking as dull and lifeless, artistically invalid. Clément’s much- honored Forbidden Games attained the reputation of a classic, but much of his other work was not well received. His all-star epic about the liberation of Paris Is Paris Burning? does not deserve the critical trouncing it was given. We strongly recommend Clément’s The Damned (Les Maudits), a gripping war film that demonstrates the director’s ease with seemingly impossible technical problems.

Clément’s film of Gervaise with Maria Schell is firmly in the French ‘tradition of quality’ dissed by Truffaut and Godard, and is by far the most powerful Zola adaptation we’ve seen. Much of Clément’s output is not yet available in Region A videodisc, including the elusive This Angry Age, with an impressive international cast: Silvana Mangano, Anthony Perkins, Richard Conte, Jo Van Fleet, Alida Valli. Clément’s unseen Lovers, Happy Lovers (Monsieur Ripois) and Que gioia vivere sound equally tempting; auteurist critic Andrew Sarris praised them, only to summarily dismiss Clément for selling out to Hollywood.

The tense crime thriller Joy House follows up on Purple Noon, with another hardboiled tale of sex and intrigue set in the affluent South of France. It was a co-production with MGM yet received only a token release in the states. Published in 1954, the book by prolific pulp expert Day Keene was retitled Les félins for France. Clément’s co-writers would chalk up impressive credentials. Pascal Jardin has writing credits on Classe tous risques and The Old Gun, and the American author Charles Williams wrote the original novels for Truffaut’s Confidentially Yours and Dennis Hopper’s The Hot Spot.

Cameraman Henri Decaë was already a key Clément collaborator; Joy House sees the two of them pulling off increasingly complex shots, in a strange chateau and in the crowded streets of Nice. Of course, the New Wave considered production polish and traditional techniques as something something to be scorned.

The reckless liaisons of young Marc (Alain Delon) land him in very hot water. The French tennis player-gambler-playboy is enjoying the company of rich women in Nice when he’s grabbed by gangsters out of New York — a team of killers dispatched to bring back his head for sleeping with the woman of a mob boss (George Gaynes). Marc narrowly escapes his captors on the ocean cliffs, but they trace him back to town. He miraculously avoids recapture by making friends at a charity mission — where he attracts the attention of Barbara (Lola Albright), a wealthy American whose donations help feed the homeless. She hires Marc as a chauffeur, and takes him to her fancy villa, a lavish house from the 1880s. Barbara’s niece / companion Melinda (Jane Fonda) fills in as cook & housekeeper, and immediately forms a crush on the handsome Marc. The villa is an excellent place to hide out, except that the persistent American hoods will surely spot Marc when he drives the women to town.

Marc is smart enough to know that his cozy situation is too good to be true. His inquiries reveal that Barbara’s wealth derives from her husband Vincent, a murderer who disappeared several years ago. He soon discovers that Vincent (André Oumansky of La Vérité and Sundays and Cybèle) is alive and hiding in secret rooms in the house. Barbara becomes more amorous with Marc, and proposes that he run away with her to South America. The naïve Melinda also has romantic designs on Marc, and is frustrated by his rejections. Marc thinks he can stay ahead of whatever scheme Barbara and the unseen Vincent have cooked up. He’s terrified that the American killers will find him, but remains cocksure of his talent for seducing women.

Joy House is not like the celebrated, classic ‘French noirs’ by directors Melville,  Dassin,  Sautet and Becker. The misadventures of Alain Delon’s slick playboy have little connection to the existential grit of writers Georges Simenon and José Giovanni, but are more of a twisty escapist crime ‘meller, promising sex and intrigue.

Handsomely filmed in B&W Franscope, the expensive show is a realistic, polished production. The blocking of scenes is not compromised by the crush of downtown Nice, where single-take shots show Marc evading capture by running through buildings, hopping on trams and jumping over traffic. The impressive escape from a gangland execution was filmed on cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean, a convincing action sequence filmed with great precision. Delon’s athleticism is emphasized: swimming underwater, scrambling up a cliff face, leaping into highway traffic. Another escape downtown includes an eye-popping car stunt or two, years before they became the norm in American thrillers.

Henri Decaë’s camera also snakes through the ornately decorated villa house, finding strange compositions in the museum-like interior. One tracking shot amid cluttered artworks ends with Marc discovering a brightly-lit modern kitchen where Melinda is preparing a meal. We never get a clear picture of the house’s labyrinthine interior — we’re told that the police searched the villa twice without discovering Vincent’s hiding place. Barbara talks to him through one-way mirrors. We think the villa might be on a hill above town, but Marc gets an eyeful of Barbara and Melinda sunbathing far below, a view through balmy trees with the ocean just beyond.

Does the technical stylishness really pay off?  Clément and Decaë’s tight framing sometimes feels rigid, over-controlled; the shots are dynamic but not particularly attractive. The slick direction favors story mechanics over character, and the proceedings are just a little too thriller-optimized to be believed. Straining to understand Barbara’s motivation while fending off Melinda’s amorous come-ons, the handsome Marc becomes just another cog in the works.

Clément’s direction makes Marc’s individual escapes seem convincing. His ability to slip out of Tight Spots would soon be co-opted by fellow French superstar Jean-Paul Belmondo. The idea of the mob boss literally calling for Marc’s head on a platter is scary but also a little cartoonish. That the American gangsters can prowl openly around Nice in a big Cadillac with New York plates also feels a little iffy, as they’d certainly attract the attention of the local casino watchdogs. The Yanks are brash but not all that individualized, with the exception of the diminuitive hood Harry, a fast man with a camera who has cuff links made of glass eyes. He’s played memorably by Sorrell Booke, later of TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard.

As for the murderous scheme cooking inside the mystery villa, author Day Keene seemingly borrowed the plot gimmick from the Robert Mitchum noir His Kind of Woman, where deported gangster Raymond Burr needs a patsy to help him reenter the U.S. under a new identity. Barbara has the young Melinda fairly well under control, and for awhile, Marc as well. To some degree Marc is like the wounded soldier in Don Siegel’s The Beguiled, relying too much on his talent for keeping women in line. His job as chauffeur for Barbara’s limousine carries a gigolo taint, similar to the predicament of William Holden’s Joe Gillis in the classic Sunset Blvd.

If Joy House eventually loses some traction it’s because we don’t really sympathize with any of its characters. Alain Delon’s Marc is a slick survivor, but we don’t like him much. The mystery format keeps us from learning more about Lola Albright’s Barbara. After several years of criminal deception she seems incapable of a sincere speech or gesture. Jane Fonda’s cute American doesn’t earn our respect either. Melinda is an okay tease and her come-ons to Marc (and even Vincent) are enticing, but do the plot revelations about her character really add up?  With nobody in particular to root for we find ourselves just waiting for the inevitable kill-off in the last reel. Will anyone survive?

Although we are told that the show was performed in English, most of both language tracks sound post-dubbed. The film’s New York prologue isn’t very compelling, because the ‘Mr. Big’ hoodlum isn’t that impressive. He’s American actor George Gaynes, familiar from later roles in comedies like Tootsie and the Police Academy movies.

Many will find Joy House sharp and sophisticated. Marc’s two-way jeopardy situation certainly keeps us guessing. Clément maintains a steamy tension between Delon and his co-stars, but the overt content seems tamed to fit Hollywood’s Production Code requirements. The film has a heavy jazz music score, one of the first feature scores by the talented Lalo Schifrin, later of Bullitt and The President’s Analyst.

We’re always eager to see more René Clément pictures. Joy House producer Jacques Bar was involved with Federico Fellini’s early I Vitelloni, and went on to make other quirky crime tales like Wake Up and Kill and The Outside Man.

The KL Studio Classics Blu-ray of Joy House (les félins) is a fine, slick 2K restoration by Gaumont. Original co-producing studio MGM distributed the film in most European markets but apparently no longer has rights. The encoding begins with a ‘scope Leo the Lion roaring logo, followed by main titles in French text and a Les félins main title card. The B&W image is quite good throughout, with a subdued, slightly low contrast look. The constant active camerawork feels several years ahead of its time.

The disc includes a choice of original English or French audio tracks. There doesn’t appear to have been an alternate European cut, as is the case with the later French thriller The Sicilian Clan.

Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson deliver a lively & conversational audio commentary, sketching a context for Joy House in the international filmmaking scene of 1964 — where it doesn’t seem to have beea n given a big welcome. They cover the backgrounds of the stars and give some insights on the career of René Clément. The filmography of the old-school filmmaker follows no strong pattern other than his three or four WW2-themed movies.

Of his two Academy Award winners for Foreign Film, Forbidden Games is an emotional powerhouse, while The Walls of Malapaga (seen once on TCM) played like a generic, mannered neorealist melodrama. The director’s name seemingly can’t be mentioned without a slam against his Is Paris Burning?  If an opportunity arises, give it a chance — its main character is Paris itself, celebrated by Maurice Jarre’s stirring music score.

René Clément’s legacy has been further clouded of late by Jane Fonda’s assertion, decades after his death, that he tried to talk her into sleeping with him on Joy House, with the notion that he ‘needed to see what her orgasms were like.’

An energetic original French trailer is included as well.

Joy House (les félins)
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent French and English audio tracks
Supplements:
Audio Commentary by Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson
French theatrical trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: June 4, 2023
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