1964 French film
Joy House (French title: Les félins / UK title: The Love Cage) is a 1964 French mystery–thriller film starring Jane Fonda, Alain Delon and Lola Albright. It is based on the 1954 novel of the same name by Day Keene.
The film was directed by René Clément, his second for MGM.[2]
Plot
In Monte Carlo, Marc, a handsome card sharp, escapes American gangsters who have been ordered to kill him because he had an affair with the boss's wife. Marc hides in a mission for the poor where Barbara, a wealthy widow, finds him and hires him as her chauffeur.
At Barbara's chateau, her niece Melinda becomes attracted to Marc, and Marc discovers that Barbara is hiding her lover Vincent in the secret rooms and passageways of the chateau. Vincent is a bank robber sought by the police for murdering Barbara's husband. He and Barbara plan to murder Marc so that Vincent may use Marc's passport to escape to South America. Marc and Barbara begin an affair but are discovered by Vincent, who then kills Barbara but is also killed by the American gangsters who mistake him for Marc.
Marc and Melinda plan to dispose of the two bodies, but when Melinda learns that Marc is planning to leave without her, she tricks the police into believing that Marc is guilty and forces him to hide in the chateau's secret rooms. He is her prisoner, just as Vincent had been her aunt's.
Production
The film was based on a Day Keene novel published in 1954. The New York Times called the book "more conventional than usual" but said the story was "... well constructed and sharply twisted in the James M. Cain manner."[3]
Film rights were bought by MGM and René Clément was hired to direct. He had previously directed MGM's The Day and the Hour, another film featuring both American and French actors.[4]
MGM signed Alain Delon to a five-picture deal following the studio's successful collaboration with him on 1963's Any Number Can Win.[5]
In March 1963, Natalie Wood was announced for the role of Melinda,[6] but she soon withdrew and was replaced by Jane Fonda.[7]
Filming began in August 1963. The film was partly shot in the historic Villa Torre Clementina.[8]
Joy House was Fonda's first film in France. Of the shoot she said, "there was chaos, rain and script changes, I fought sixty battles and won them all."[9] She filmed her part speaking English and was later dubbed into French.[10] She later recalled that Clément directed the film 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 [later husband Roger] Vadim.[11]
Fonda married Vadim in 1965 and lived in France for several years. During the shoot, she also experienced sexual harassment by Clément. Fonda later alleged that Clément, 24 years her elder, tried to persuade her to sleep with him in preparation for a love scene in the film.[12]
Reception
The Los Angeles Times called the film "an oddball thriller."[13]
