Le Gendarme de St. Tropez (1964)

Le Gendarme de St. Tropez is a French film comedy first released in 1964, directed by Jean Girault.  The film stars Louis de Funès, Geneviève Grad, Michel Galabru, Daniel Cauchy and Maria Pacôme.  It has also been released under the title: The Gendarme of St. Tropez.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


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…



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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