Les Félins (1964)
Directed by René Clément

Film Review

René Clément may not have had many admirers amongst the hallowed ranks of the French New Wave, but this did not prevent him from being one of the most lauded European film directors of his generation.  From the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, he was France's most commercially successful filmmaker, and his films not only attracted huge audiences but also garnered a slew of prestigious awards, including three major prizes at Cannes.  One of the reasons for his success was his versatility.  Never one to get stuck in a groove - no matter how lucrative it may have been - Clément seemed to delight in skipping from one genre to another, never repeating the same formula, always ready to embrace new styles, new trends, new stories.

Les Félins (a.k.a. Joy House) is a film that particularly stands out in Clément's remarkably diverse oeuvre, a seductively stylish blend of classic film noir and psychological drama that brazenly taps into the popularity of the recently re-invented French gangster film.  American crime thriller B-movies of the 1940s had started the ball rolling just after the war, leading to an immediate spate of French imitations which include the oft derided Lemmy Caution series.  The genre acquired more respectability in the mid-1950s with the arrival of two seminal works, Jacques Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi (1953) and Jules Dassin's Du rififi chez les hommes (1955).  By the end of the decade, French film noir had become a magnet for both audiences and serious filmmakers, with spicy jazz and neon-lit urban landscapes becoming familiar motifs of this Gallic reformulation of the American angst-ridden policier.  Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour léchaufaud (1958) and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos (1962) show the genre's progression from moody potboiler to fine art.

René Clément made Les Félins, his own contribution to film noir, at the time when the realistic polar was just beginning to become a formulaic mainstay of French cinema.  Creatively, the genre had already passed its peak but it would contain to dominate the French filmmaking landscape for another two decades.  Clément's film offers little in the way of originality and watching it today it feels like a conscious pastiche of what has gone before.  It is markedly different, both in tone and style, to the director's earlier thriller, Plein soleil (1960), a more inspired work based on Patricia Highsmith's novel The Talented Mr Ripley that luxuriates in a gentle aura of sustained menace in its sumptuous Mediterranean setting.

By contrast, Les Félins is a more conventional thriller, where the brutality and malignancy are more clearly exposed and character subtlety is conspicuous by its absence.  The noirish plot of seduction and duplicity is classic B-movie material and might well have been lifted from a good James M. Cain potboiler (there are some obvious similarities with The Postman Always Rings Twice).  The film's central flaw is that none of the three protagonists has anything to endear themselves to us - the cats of the title, they are a trio of nasty self-interested brutes that plot and deceive with no shred of conscience or remorse,  It is a morbidly grim assessment of human nature that Clément presents us with, all too reminiscent of Julien Duvivier's bleak offerings of this time, films like the savagely cynical Chair de poule (1963).

Henri Decaë's stark black and white photography owes a great deal to American noir classics of the past decade and lends the film both its sumptuous beauty and its unremitting mood of pessimism.  A key ingredient of Clément's slick mise-en-scène, Decaë's striking visuals (the impact of which is heightened by Lalo Schifrin's oppressive jazz score) achieve a perfect blend of hard-edged realism and bitter lyricism, more than making up for a somewhat pedestrian and poorly paced plot.  The cinematography and music achieve a vibrant unity, instilling in the spectator a constantly growing sense of unease as the central male character - Alain Delon at his finest - becomes increasingly aware of his predicament and fails to escape the trap into which he is ineluctably drawn.

This was Clément's third collaboration with Delon, following their excellent work together on Plein soleil and Che gioia vivere (1961).  These three films are significant for the actor, as they mark a clear transition from the sympathetic innocent of his early years to the more introspective and dangerous kind of character he would naturally gravitate towards in the late '60s and throughout the '70s.

The Alain Delon that Les Félins presents us with is an intriguing amalgam of earlier and subsequent character portrayals.  He is both an innocent victim and a calculating loner, just as capable of being haplessly seduced by the film's two deadly femmes fatales Jane Fonda and Lola Albright (both absolutely stunning) as he is of betraying them out of vicious self-interest.  The sparse dialogue allows Delon to turn in a far more subtle and controlled performance than he was known for at the time, a tantalising foretaste of his subsequent legendary portrayals in Le Samourai (1967) and Monsieur Klein (1976).

At a time when René Clément was being routinely rubbished by the Cahiers du cinéma and other proponents of the French New Wave, Les Félins was generally well received by the critics and met with considerable success at the box office.  Its audience of 1.4 million in France was impressive but it pales in comparison with the director's previous Jeux interdits (1952) and Gervaise (1956) and his next feature, the epic war film Paris brûle-t-il? (1966), all of which achieved in excess of 4 million spectators.

Les Félins marked an unfortunate turning point in Clément's career, the last entry in his award-studded oeuvre that can genuinely be termed a work of considerable artistic merit.  The director's reluctance to revisit terrain that had proven popular for him would ultimately be his downfall, and it was left to other, less talented filmmakers to capitalise on the success of Les Félins and rehash its distinctive brand of sixties cool in pursuit of an easy buck.  Clément's film is just as derivative as the ones that came in its wake, but artistically it is streets ahead and so wondrously evocative of that most shamelessly hedonistic of decades.  Watching Les Félins is a seductive and jarring experience, like being caressed and scratched by a wild cat at the same time.

Film Synopsis

French playboy Marc has a nasty surprise waiting for him when he returns to his hotel room after a game of tennis.  A gang of thuggish hitmen lie in wait, acting on the instructions of an American gangland boss who intends to repay Marc for carrying on a clandestine love affair with his wife.  Once the preliminaries are over, the killers bundle Marc into a car, intent on murdering him and disposing of the body in some quiet, out-of-the-way place on the coast.

Marc takes full advantage of a momentary distraction and manages to flee his captors, taking refuge in a Church asylum for homeless and penniless men.  It is here that he comes into contact with a wealthy widow named Barbara, who offers him work as a chauffeur-cum-odd job man at her secluded mansion on the French Riviera.  Glad for the opportunity to lie low for a time, Marc accepts the offer, even if it means surrendering his passport to his seductive employer.  The only other inhabitant of the large house is Barbara's younger cousin Melina, a poor relation who resents being treated as a servant.

Marc's attempt to escape to Paris is thwarted when he is recognised at the train station by one of his gangster pursuers.  Luckily Melinda is on hand to drive him back to the safety of the mansion.  The rescue strikes Marc as too much of a coincidence and he begins to suspect that his employer has an ulterior motive in keeping him out of harm's way.  The truth is that there is a fourth person hiding in the mansion, a young man named Vincent, Barbara's secret lover.

It was Vincent who murdered the rich woman's husband. To evade capture by the police he has been concealed in the attic whilst Barbara contrives a scheme that will allow the two of them to escape to South America where they hope to start a new life.  Barbara's plan is for Vincent to kill Marc and take his identity.  The one thing she did not allow for was the possibility of her cousin falling in love with her unsuspecting victim.  To save Marc, Melinda comes up with a plan of her own, but things go somewhat awry when the gangsters hunting Marc suddenly show up at Barbara's house and mistake Vincent for their elusive quarry.  Marc's one last hope of escape is ultimately thwarted by Melinda's superior cunning...