Les Félins [The Love Cage] [Joy House] *** (1964, Alain Delon, Jane Fonda, Lola Albright) – Classic Movie Review 7,011

‘The Women of the “Joy House” Allowed Him Every Freedom… Except the Freedom to Leave!’ The fabulous Fonda gets involved with the delicious Delon in the 1964 French mystery thriller film The Love Cage [Joy House].

‘The Women of the “Joy House” Allowed Him Every Freedom… Except the Freedom to Leave!’

Co-writer/ director René Clément’s 1964 French black-and-white mystery thriller film Les Félins [The Love Cage] [Joy House] stars Sixties beautiful people Jane Fonda and Alain Delon in his interesting and steamy, but highly improbable and not entirely successful attempt to mix French art house cinema with US suspense thrills and commercialism.

A Riviera villa is the setting for murder and mystery in this adult thriller drama, based on the 1954 novel Joy House by Day Keene [aka Gunard Hjertstedt], and produced by Frenchman Jacques Bar for MGM. Fonda and Delon sizzle, while Clément directs with a little French flair and style.

Delon, playing Marc, a lowlife running from a gangster whose wife he has had an affair with, takes refuge in a driver’s job with wealthy widow Barbara (Lola Albright), whose castle is also home to her niece Melinda (Fonda) and lover Vincent (André Oumansky), who has killed her husband. Did I mention that the plot is highly improbable? No matter.

Also in the cast are Sorrell Booke, Arthur Howard, George Gaynes, Carl Studer, Georges Douking, Del Negro, and Jacques Bezard.

Les Félins [The Love Cage] [Joy House] is directed by René Clément, runs 98 minutes, is an Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Cité Films, Compagnie Internationale de Productions and Cinématographiques (CIPRA) production, released by MGM, is written by René Clément, Pascal Jardin and Charles Williams, based on the 1954 novel Joy House by Day Keene [aka Gunard Hjertstedt], is shot in black-and-white by Henri Decaë, is produced by Jacques Bar, is scored by Lalo Schifrin, and is designed by Jean André.

The Villa Torre Clementina.

It is shot partly in the 1904 historic Villa Torre Clementina mansion in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France.

It was Fonda’s first movie in France. She recalled it was shot without a script: ‘I didn’t speak very good French then, and I never understood much of what was going on. The only people who really dug that movie, for some reason, were junkies. They used to come up to me and give me a big wink. But I’m awfully glad I did it because it got me into France and I met [Roger] Vadim [later her husband].’

René Clément (1913–1996), one of the leading French directors of the post-World War Two era, also directed Delon in Plein Soleil (1960), as well as the 1961 comedy The Joy of Living [Quelle joie de vivre], and Is Paris Burning? [Paris brûle-t-il ?] (1966).

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com