One of the latest films in this collection, released when the French New Wave was already several years old but New Hollywood had yet to come into its own, René Clément’s brilliantly over-the-top Les félins (US: Joy House) dances on the fence between classic noir and neo-noir. Whatever we call it, it’s an outrageous concoction of Gothic-gangster-action-murder-mystery set on the cote d’azur and starring French sensation Alain Delon and that quintessentially modern American actress, Jane Fonda, accompanied by one of the most brazen musical scores in all of noir. Delon plays a con artist womanizer named Marc who’s running from a gangster whose wife he had seduced and finds shelter in a Catholic mission. When two strange, beautiful, black-clad philanthropists (Fonda and Lola Albright) stop by the mission with donations, they home in on Marc and take him home to their neo-Gothic mansion, ultimately offering him a job as live-in chauffeur. It’s not long before Marc is juggling affairs with both women, but the more he learns about their mysterious pasts, the more the gangsters on his tail don’t look so bad. Some may find the film to lag in the middle, but between the action of the first act, in which Delon’s physicality during his extended capture and escape from gangsters rivals that of Tom Cruise, and the third act, in which secrets and plots are unleashed with explosive force, the film is a thrill ride deserving of reassessment.