Joy House

Lola Albright, Alain Delon, and Jane Fonda in Joy House

Rene Clément's Joy House, from 1964, is an entertainingly trashy mystery thriller. The film transfers the majority of the action of Day Keene's pulp novel to an estate overlooking the Mediterranean outside of Nice. There, after a prologue in New York and a prolonged chase along the Riviera, we meet Marc (Alain Delon), an aimless gigolo on the run from a New York mobster who resents the fact that Marc was having an affair with his younger missus. Marc, broke and desperate, hides out in a Mission House where he meets the wealthy benefactor of the institution, Barbara (Lola Albright), and her younger cousin, Melinda (Jane Fonda). They are both intrigued by the young stranger and suspiciously soon he is hired to be their chauffeur and all around house stud. 

Barbara and Melinda both seek to sink their claws into Marc (the flick was entitled Les felins in France), but Barbara, who has the bucks, seemingly holds the upper hand. She inherited a fortune when her husband was murdered, possibly by Barbara's since disappeared lover. The relationship between Melinda and Barbara resembles that of Cinderella and her step-mother. Albright ably supplies both the regal surface and the tormented interior of her character. Fonda nails the chipper optimism of a young woman seemingly pleased to be her cousin's scullery maid, yet one concealing a steely undercarriage. One of Clément's few visual coups is his introductory shot of Melinda and Barbara which presents them as sisters of mercy when they are actually femme fatales.

The sprawling castle on Barbara's estate hosts one big secret and I won't be the spoiler. However, this twist is revealed way too early in the film, foiling the film's stabs at suspense. Clement and cinematographer Henri Decae have fun prowling around the Byzantine castle filled with stuffed animals, tchotchkes, two Picassos and a Giacometti, but the twists and turns of the plot add up to little. Lalo Schifrin's jazzy score is a plus, though it loses a little zing if you heard its recycled parts used in television's Mission Impossible. 

Joy House's biggest flaw is Delon's lack of facility with English dialogue. His romantic scenes with Albright and Fonda bog the film down instead of ratcheting things up. Clement does utilizes Delon as a sex object well and shows off the actor's physical ability. When Delon is swimming, climbing up rocky hills, running for his life, manipulating cards or brandishing tennis racquets, his performance is solid. Unfortunately, his presence did not help the film succeed commercially or critically. Howard Thompson in The New York Times deemed it "dismal claptrap" Joan Didion and Andrew Sarris were more attuned to its trashy charms with Sarris extolling it as "mindless entertainment."

I am of that mind, but the film still leaves me on the fence about Clement. Compare the overwrought effects Clement employs in the final scene with that of Howard Hawks' professionalism at the end of Land of the Pharaohs. The fates of Delon and Joan Collins are the same in both films, but the conclusion of Hawks film has an element of chilly fatalism brought out by the director's understatement. Hawks' handling of the conclusion transcends the cheesy underpinnings of his film while Clément's flick remains mired in the fromage. Jane Fonda has remarked that the making of Joy House was chaotic with Clement often working without a script. She also said that Clement attempted to nail her on the casting couch. Despite this undoubtably unpleasant experience, Ms.  Fonda's efforts and those of Ms. Albright make Joy House worth seeing.

Delon, Fonda, and Rene Clement