Summary
Ludovic Cruchot, an overly enthusiastic country policeman, is transferred to Saint-Tropez,
where he immediately sets about imposing his idea of the law on what he sees as a morally
lax public – much to the chagrin of his adjutant Gerber. When he learns that
nudists are bathing on a public beach, he puts his gendarmes through an intense training
exercise in a determined bid to round up the culprits. Meanwhile, his daughter Nicole
is pretending to be the daughter of a wealthy yacht owner, to impress her new friends.
The real owner of the yacht turns out to be dealer in stolen paintings and Cruchot is
soon implicated in the theft of a priceless Rembrandt…
Review
It was Jean Girault’s film, Pouic-Pouic, which turned a hitherto minor film
comedian into a national star in France. It was Girault’s subsequent film
Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez which transformed that star into an institution.
That star was of course Louis de Funès, arguably France’s most popular post-WWII
film comedian.
Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez was the first in what was to be a series of six films
spanning nearly twenty years which followed the exploits of an officious and incompetent
gendarme chief, played brilliantly be Louis de Funès. The films were hugely
popular in France, each being a box office phenomenon, and even today they retain a popular
mainstream following. The film series capitalises on one thing the French people
love doing, which is to make fun of authoritarian figures, the police in particular.
Although the plot is not going to win any awards for originality, Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez
is a superb piece of comedy, thanks largely to the larger than life performances
of Louis de Funès and his gendarme cohorts (including the superlative Michel Galabru
and Jean Lefèbvre). De Funès’ increasingly desperate attempts
to round up a group of nudists is perhaps the film’s high point, involving an hilarious
spoof police academy training exercise.
With its sunny location filming and up-lifting music (including the catchy “
Do-you-Do-You-Saint-Topez?” and the unforgettable gendarmes' march, “
La balade des gendarmes”), the film is instantly evocative of the hedonistic
optimism of the early 1960s. An uplifting and entertaining film which shows French
comic farce at its best.
© James Travers 2001
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