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.
© James Travers 2022
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next René Clément film:
Paris brûle-t-il? (1966)
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...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.