The Troops of St. Tropez (1964)

Gendarme Ludovic Cruchot is re-assigned to the French Riviera seaside resort town of Saint-Tropez where petty criminals and his own daughter give him a hard time.

Director:

Jean Girault

Writers:

Richard Balducci (original story), Jacques Vilfrid (screenplay)

Stars:

Louis de Funès, Geneviève Grad, Michel Galabru

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Louis de Funès	...	Maréchal des logis-chef Ludovic Cruchot
Geneviève Grad	...	Nicole Cruchot
Michel Galabru	...	Adjudant Jérôme Gerber
Daniel Cauchy	...	Richard
Madeleine Delavaivre	...	Une estivante / woman on holiday
Maria Pacôme	...	Mme Lareine Leroy
Claude Piéplu	...	Boisselier (as Claude Pieplu)
Gabriele Tinti	...	Gangster chauffeur (as Gabriele Tini)
Michelle Wargnier	...	(as Michele Wargnier)
Christian Marin	...	Maréchal des Logis Albert Merlot
Jean Lefebvre	...	Maréchal des Logis Lucien Fougasse
Jean-Pierre Bertrand	...	Eddie
Sylvie Bréal	...	Jessica (as Sylvie Breal)
Martine de Breteuil	...	La duchesse d'Armantière
Evelyne Céry	...	(as Evelyne Cery)

Storyline

The ambitious police officer Cruchot is transferred to St. Tropez. He's struggling with persistent nude swimmers, but even more with his teenage daughter, who's trying to impress her rich friends by telling them her father was a millionaire and owned a yacht in the harbor. He gets drawn into it when he tries to cover for her when a friend 'lends' the car of her assumed father. It turns out that the real owners of the yacht aren't exactly what they pretend to be either...

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Plot Keywords:

saint tropez | yacht | police | southern france | water | 

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Taglines:

Beguiling BATHING BEAUTIES will give you a load of laughs!

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Genres:

Comedy | Crime

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Details

Country:

France Italy

Language:

French

Release Date:

9 September 1964 (France)

Also Known As:

The Troops of St. Tropez

Filming Locations:

Studios de la Victorine - 16 avenue Edoard Grinda, Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France

Box Office

Budget:

FRF 1,350,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Société Nouvelle de Cinématographie (SNC), Franca Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

95 min (DVD)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor) Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The biggest box office hit of 1964 in France with 7.8 million viewers.

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Connections

Followed by The Troops & Troop-ettes (1982)

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Soundtracks

Zorro est arrivé
Performed by Henri Salvador

User Reviews

Ludovic Cruchot and Jacques Clouseau

The first "Pink Panther" movie, directed by Blake Edwards, with Peter Sellers in the main role, came out in 1963. As practically everybody knows, it was a wonderful spoof of the French police as seen through British eyes. Although the exact relationships between the Pink Panther movies on the one side and the totally 6 "Le Gendarme De Saint-Tropez"-movies, directed by Jean Girault, has, as far as I know, never been revealed or scrutinized, the latter ones, starting in 1964, can surely be seen as an answer to make fun of the French provincial police by some people from Paris.

A short comparison between Sellers (who has been considered widely as the best comedian of all times) and De Funes (who never got really famous in the US despite the release of such movies like "Rabbi Jacob" and the VHS release of "La Grande Vadrouille"), De Funes' comic is devastatingly different from the one of Sellers. De Funes, who was a trained pantomimic, used this special capacity of his in most of his films, his being-a-comedian has elements of vaudeville - yet not in the sense of the Marx brothers, of slapstick - yet not in the sense of the early American silent movies, - of horseplay, yet without striving tastelessness or primitiveness. However, his comic is never intellectual, Funes could never have played Dr. Strangelove - as Seller could never have been Balduin or Oskar.

Nevertheless, the characters of Cruchot and Cluseau are closer than one would expect, yet still radically different in their basics. While Clouzeau never seems to be ridiculous when he hunts criminals, Cruchot does, because he is more interested in chicken-stealing than in felonies. How Cruchot treats his caught thieves, reveals that he is not to much different from them. On the other side, Clouseau is different from everybody, he would be too clumsy to associate with his "victims". Clouzeau is much more the French guy as he is seen by foreigners than Cruchot: Quiet, with a tendency to be elegant, womanizing, polite. But now quite the opposite is Cruchot: He walks around with his uniform even at home, he is loud, rude, slaps and hits and beats his "subservients", has mostly a daughter (in later "Gendarm"-sequels a wife), but does not come in flirting contact with any other women. He uses politeness and respect strictly to get to his purpose - as he uses otherwise rudeness and disrespect. However, both Cluseau and Cruchot are behaving strictly against police rules, but in their "anticyclic" behavior they reach the goal where probably everyone else would fail.

Louis De Funes has often being criticized for having played the allegedly primitive, but funny "Gendarm"-movies, after having been for decades a revered, but outside of France completely unnoticed stage actor. It is true that especially his work that he did with Gerard Oury belongs probably to the best that French comedy of the 60ies and 70ies had to offer, but without the "Gendarm"-movies he possibly would never have reached his enormous popularity. It is time that these 6 movies are edited for the international audience, too.