Jean Girault : De Funès or...

Jean Girault is such a common French name that it could be the local Alan Smithee : the alias a US director uses when he chooses to dissociate himself from his film (Alan Smithee, i.e. « the alias men »).

Some, watching Jean Girault’s films, may even agree that a sensible director would disown them.

But there is no French Alan Smithee. « Droit d’auteur » protects French filmmakers better than copyright law does their US colleagues : they have final cut and imprescriptible moral rights.

This is no guarantee against a truly bad film, but it means you cannot wash your hands, and name, of your mistakes.

Besides, among the many French Jean Girault, one did direct films. All are not be memorable, some were very successful. But, rather than as Jean Girault films, they are known as Louis De Funès movies.

Jean Girault directed eleven films with the comic actor. And twenty without him, best forgotten.

The director and the actor first paired on « Pouic-Pouic » (1963). Most of De Funès’s career was already behind him, but he best was fortunately still to come : he had played in close to one hundred films, but except in a handful of them, only cameos.

As the saying goes : you can make a killing in movies, you cannot make a living. For thirty years, the latter was dangerously close to true for De Funès ; as to a killing, in his dreams only.

« Pouic-Pouic »’s script revolved around a piece of land which was, or was not, oil rich. That was the question and probably a metaphor for the quest Girault and De Funès had just embarked on together : to find the elusive story that would bring them fame and fortune.

On that road, « Pouic Pouic » was no home run, but at least a single : De Funès topped the cast and was free to grimace and rage at will.

The home run happened one year later : home and the oil field were in Saint-Tropez : « Le gendarme de Saint Tropez » (1964) was a popular triumph and a long-awaited gift for De Funès’s fiftieth and Girault’s fortieth birthdays.

« Maréchal-des-logis » -sergeant, or about...- Cruchot (De Funès) is transferred to party happy and morally loose Saint Tropez, nearly ten years after Vadim introduced the Côte d’Azur resort to international screen fame, while creating woman and Bardot.

Cruchot’s teenage daughter, Nicole, gets mixed up with a gang of art robbers, but eventually helps her father and his colleagues arrest the ring.

Pretty thin story line for a killing, even for a living ? Rationale for success laid elsewhere.
French « Gendarmerie » -military police in charge of rural areas and small towns- was popular, much more so than its civil counterpart left to care for the bigger cities.

By mocking it gently, the film also catered for the French anarchist streak, while the main actors wore uniforms at a time when a general had been elected head of state.

As its title clearly states, the film is not about an ensemble cast forming the « brigade de gendarmerie » -the MP outpost- but about De Funès and a supporting cast headed by Michel Galabru -another long struggling comic actor-, who plays « adjudant » Gerber : « Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez », not « Les gendarmes de Saint-Tropez » ; all titles in the series will use the singular mode.

« Adjudant » Gerber, not « maréchal-des-logis » Cruchot, heads the « brigade » : Cruchot is middle management and the film core target French individualistic middle class.

Through Cruchot’s daughter, Nicole, the movie also lightly addresses the fast widening generation divide that will lead to the student revolts of 1968.

Set in Saint-Tropez, it allows its public to glimpse and laugh at a privileged set and a way of -easy- life it both envies and spurns.

From the start, « Le gendarme » franchise appealed to a conservative crowd.

Two years later, Jean Girault took his « gendarme » to New York (« Le gendarme à New York » - 1966), as if crossing the pond, even only for shooting purposes, was a sure measure of success for French artists.

Two more years and, while French students rioted and Godard, Truffaut and others stopped the film festival in nearby Cannes, « Le gendarme » got married (« Le gendarme se marie »- 1968) : Cruchot needed no prior divorce and did not turn bigamist, he was a widower.

The lucky spouse’s name was no surprise : Claude Gensac was De Funès’s wife in ten films ; in only eight, did she play another role.

Some actors fear to be cast forever as James Bond or Batman. Probably no feminist, Claude Gensac always appeared content to enter French film history as De Funès’s on screen wife. Real life Mrs De Funès did not seem to mind either.

Claude Gensac and Louis De Funès were the perfect couple : water and fire. She monitored her husband’s eruptions with quiet amusement and « bourgeois » aloofness and contributed her own brand of well-behaved, cool lunacy to their movies.