La Cage aux Folles (Da.Ma. Cinematografia, Les Artistes Associés, 1978_

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (June 12) I watched a legendary movie I can’t recall ever having seen before: the original La Cage aux Folles (1978), a French-Italian co-production based on a 1973 play by Jean Poiret about a Gay male couple who own a nightclub together in a resort community in the south of France. The more butch member of the couple is Renato Baldi (Ugo Tognazzi, who was supplied by the Italian studio, Da.Ma. Cinematografia, and who refused to speak any language besides Italian, so director and co-screenwriter Éduardo Molinaro had to tweak his lines so the French version, spoken by a voice double, would match his lip movements). His partner, who owns 80 percent of La Cage aux Folles nightclub and stars in its drag shows, is Albin Mougeotte, who performs as “Zaza Napoli.” (According to an imdb.com “Trivia” item, “Folle” is French slang for an effeminate Gay man.) Twenty years earlier, Renato ended up in a single compromising encounter with a woman, Simone Deblon (Claire Maurier), and in one of those “infallible pregnancies at a single contact” classic-era Hollywood producer David O. Selznick often ridiculed, Renato’s one-night walk on the straight side produced a son, Laurent (Rémi Laurent, who’s easily the sexiest guy in the movie even though one wonders how Renato keeps all the horny Gay guys in his establishment from hitting on his son). It’s not clear just how Laurent has been raised – we do know his mom bailed on him almost as soon as he was born, and we get the impression that his dad was the custodial parent but he spent most of his time in boarding schools and camps.

But he’s fallen in love and become engaged to marry Andréa Charrier (Luisa Manieri), the rather empty-headed daughter of Right-wing French politician Simon Charrier (Michel Galabru) and his wife Louise (Carmen Scarpitta). Simon was the speechwriter for the French president, who ran on a “Unity and Morals” ticket, until said President suddenly died of a heart attack while in the middle of having sex with an underage prostitute. Now the media are hounding Simon for comment and he’s been reduced to coming and going to his house via a ladder to escape the omnipresent gaggle of journalists and bottom-feeders. Trying to talk up her fiancé and get her parents to agree to the marriage, Andréa has invented an elaborate tale that Laurent is really from a family of diplomats, with his father being sent around the world on a regular basis while his mother is a housewife. Naturally the Charrier parents want to meet the remarkable young man who’s about to become their son-in-law, and they essentially invite themselves to dinner at Renato’s home not realizing that a) he’s Gay, b) he’s in a 20-year relationship, and c) both men make their livings running a drag club. There’s a grimly amusing scene in which Renato, Albin, Laurent and their manservant, a queeny Black man named Jacob (Benny Luke) who appears to be an immigrant from one of France’s former African colonies with a penchant for wearing as little as possible and disdaining shoes, try frantically to “de-Gay” their living space in preparation for the Charriers’ visit. This includes removing all the sexually explicit statuary – mostly reproductions of Greek athletic nudes but also a bowl in the shape of an ass and a statuette with a prominent (and decidedly beyond scale) penis sticking out of the front. When one of them breaks off the statue’s dick, they decide they can leave the rest of it in place.

In preparation for the dinner, Albin decides to show up in full drag and pose as Laurent’s mother, while Renato has meanwhile gone to visit Laurent’s actual mother, who in the meantime has become a major executive and is referred to as “Madame President.” He’s able to get in to see her despite the usual phalanx of receptionists and secretaries controlling access to her, and – much to the disgust of Albin, who’s tagged along for the ride and is waiting outside Simone’s office – the two of them huddle inside and the red door indicating that no one is allowed to enter and interrupt them goes on. Simone agrees to show up at the dinner party and acknowledge her actual status as Laurent’s mother and also pretend that she and Renato have had an ongoing relationship. Renato and Albin have Jacob dress up in full butler’s uniform, including shoes, and serve the dinner – though Jacob uses a set of sexually explicit plates with the same ancient Greek-style depictions of athletes as on the statues they got rid of. Jacob hurriedly covers the potentially offensive images with a yucky-looking red soup he announces is from an old peasants’ recipe. Meanwhile, the reporters and paparazzi, alerted by a leak from Simon Carriere’s chauffeur (Venantino Venantini), have surrounded La Cage aux Folles and the home above it with cameras at the ready, eager to top the scandal of the supposedly “moral” French president shacking up with an underage Black prostitute with one about his campaign manager visiting a Gay bar in the south of France. With the media bottom-feeders and scumbags surrounding the place, Renato and Albin decide there’s only one way to get Simon out of the way safely: by dressing him in drag. The finale takes place at the big church wedding of Laurent and Andréa.

La Cage aux Folles (the official English translation was Birds of a Feather, though Google Translate renders it as The Cage of the Madwomen!) became the most popular foreign-language film ever released in the U.S. until the Chinese martial-arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000 topped it, and it was a ground-breaking movie in a lot of aspects, including not only presenting an older Gay male couple but showing them as still very much in love despite the constant bickering much like long-term married straight couples. Ironically, though I was familiar with the story through its American incarnations – my late partner John Gabrish bought the original cast CD of the 1983 U.S. musical adaptation by Gay composer Jerry Herman and Gay playwright Harvey Fierstein, and I’d seen the brilliantly funny 1996 U.S. remake The Birdcage, directed by Mike Nichols, written by Elaine May (reuniting them from the short-lived two-person improv act they had done in the early 1960’s with sensational success) and starring Robin Williams (as the more butch of the partners because he had already done Mrs. Doubtfire and he didn’t want to do two drag roles in a row) and Nathan Lane, with the action moved to South Florida – I don’t think I’d ever seen the original film until last night. Charles had seen it many times, and I’m sure it had been on the periphery of my cultural awareness even though I never actually sought it out.

I also remember reading about it in Steven Bach’s Final Cut, his memoir of his years as a United Artists production executive, in which he recalled visiting the set in the south of France and hearing the actors complain about the incredible heat they faced wearing their elaborate drag costumes both indoors on the sets and outdoors in the hot sun of a southern French summer. It still holds up surprisingly well as a rambunctious farce with a veiled but unmistakable political subtext (which, not surprisingly, became considerably less veiled in the 1983 musical, with its big anthemic song “I Am What I Am” that became a near-mandatory item on the playlists at Pride events), even though – an old bugbear of mine – there’s almost no depiction of physical affection among the characters that are supposed to be Gay. Granted that Renato and Albin are a long-term couple and their ardor in (and out of) the bedroom has no doubt cooled over time, but still my husband Charles and I (who’ve been together as a couple for 30 years and been legally married for nearly 17) kiss and hold hands together sometimes!