Le Gendarme en balade (1970)

Le Gendarme en balade is a French film comedy first released in 1970, directed by Jean Girault.  The film stars Louis de Funès, Jean Lefebvre, Guy Grosso, Michel Modo and Nicole Vervil.  It has also been released under the title: The Gendarme Takes Off.  Our overall rating for this film is: mediocre.


To their dismay, the entire gendarmerie of St Tropez find themselves retired, replaced by a team of younger, fitter gendarmes.   Cruchot finds nothing but boredom in his retirement and reminisces on the old days with his former adjutant Gerbier.  Both men jump at the opportunity to relive their past when they learn that their colleague Fougasse has lost his memory.   They are sure that by dressing up in their old gendarme uniforms and revisiting the locations of their earlier triumphs, Fougasse will overcome his amnesia.  This harmless gesture of goodwill quickly propels the ex-gendarmes into a series of adventures which brings them into opposition with the new generation of gendarmes...

With three successful films under their belt, the gendarmes of St Tropez are already in a nostalgic frame of mind.  This is the first sign that the series is running out of steam, with the writers’ imagination already starting to flag.  Sure enough, the final two films in the series stretched credibility to the limit, with our heroes having to contend with shape-changing extra-terrestrials and then, even less plausibly, women gendarmes.  Le Gendarme en balade may be wacky, but it is at least set in a world we can recognise.

Although this film spends a great deal of time wallowing in the successes of the past, it is manages to generate some great comedy.  Despite a rambling plot (which looks as if it was entirely improvised), the film is a pleasure to watch, mainly because of its feeling bonhomie and because of the terrific comic performances.   By now, Louis de Funès has become the master of the offensive grimace, performing facial contortions which have to be seen to be believed.  As ever, he performs brilliantly alongside Michel Galabru, who plays Cruchot’s long suffering (and suffering is very much the ) adjutant.   The catchy gendarme march theme (which featured briefly in the first two gendarme films) finally gets a decent airing, amply reinforcing the themes of nostalgia and camaraderie.

The comedy is not what could be described as sophisticated, relying as it does mainly on impromptu, overly theatrical slapstick and contrived comic situations.   Nevertheless, despite its lack of subtlety, this is a very funny film which will continue to bring pleasure to many.  The best scene is where Cruchot and Gerbier are pursued on the beach by a heat-sinking, nuclear-tipped missile, perhaps the best scene in the entire gendarme series.  There are many other gems though, including some outrageous parodies of some very famous films and an oddly surreal moment when Cruchot and his friend the turbo-charged nun refer to their earlier films...

© James Travers 2002

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