Lauded far beyond its station , "l'amour à la chaine" is little more than the fifties movies dealing with the subject: "le désert de Pigalle (Joannon) "les filles de la nuit" and "marchand de filles" (Cloche ,the latter being even more daring than "l'amour à la chaine" ); in 1960 ,Faurez showed the workers taking a rebel stand against the pimps ,not one of his best works.
The subject was not that much new, and Claude de Givray ,who reportedly had the crudest lines of the dialog drowned out by a power saw ,did not actually renew it.
The screenplay is as melodramatic as the former works I mention above: the girl ,forced to prostitute herself because she 's got to support her daddy (too bad this character should be so underwritten ,because the scene between the girl and her no- use-at anything but still well-meaning father took the screenplay off the beaten track for a while ; the scene with the twins in the mirrored room , a nod at "lady from Shanghai " , could have raised one's admiration ,but it's botched. Ditto for the scene in the church where the future bad gal confesses her (future)sins .The final scenes take us back to the Saint-Sulpice pictures of the fifties anyway .
So much for the usual suspects: the poor girl who tries to escape from the clutches (once with us ,always with us) of her pimps , the young man who comes to the rescue of the damsel in distress,the pimp who falls in love with his "protégée" , even the white slave trade is broached (like in "marchand de filles" and "les impures" and many more did before))
Fortunately Jean Yanne (Pornotropos (sic!)) is convincing (but it would take Claude Chabrol to make him a real great actor) and lovely Perrette Pradier as a madam saves something from the wreckage .As does Caussimon as the vicar.
In the following decade ,Miou-Miou was awarded a Cesar for her portrayal of a prostitute(based on a real life story) in "la dérobade"(1979) ; a better choice than "l'amour à la chaine" .
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