Les Félins (1964) - film review

A vindictive American gangster boss is far from amused when he discovers that his wife has been entertaining herself with a French playboy named Marc.  Spitting blood, he sends a group of his men to find Marc and return with his head.  Finding the playboy proves to be easy but, just before the villains can do their worst, he effects a remarkable escape.  Fearing for his life, Marc hides out in a Church asylum for down-and-outs.  Here, he meets a wealthy widow, Barbara, who engages him as her chauffeur.  Barbara lives in a grand house on the Côte-d’Azur with her poor cousin, Melinda, whom she treats as a servant girl.  Marc suspects that all is not what it seems and he soon realises that the pawn in a very nasty game of deceit and revenge…

After their successful first collaboration on Plein soleil (1960), director René Clément, actor Alain Delon and cinematographer Henri Decae were reunited for a similar kind of slick psychological thriller.   Whilst Les Félins is generally less artistically appealing than that earlier film, it is not without is charms.   Clément’s exuberant style of noirish thriller and Decae’s expressive photography work together perfectly, making this a compelling and distinctive work.

Alain Delon’s charismatic performance – brilliantly tongue-in cheek and far less complacent than in later years – almost puts his attractive co-stars (Jane Fonda and Lola Albright) to shame, although fans of Fonda should  not be disappointed by her contribution to this film.  Whilst the plot is tortuously complicated, even tending to self-parody in places, Les Félins is an eminently watchable film, and easily one of the classiest French crime thrillers of the 1960s.  It was also the last notable success for René Clément, whose filmmaking career hit the rocks so spectacularly with his subsequent film, Paris brûle-t-il?

© James Travers 2003

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