Le gendarme se marie

Whatever you have to say against the "The Troops Gets Marriad" you got to give it the credit for one merit: it didn't duplicate the same mistakes than the first sequel set in New York, and that includes the setting.

It's the first film in St Tropez four years after the one that launched the career of Louis de Funès. Four years is a lot, it means ten movies and maybe fifty millions of viewers, De Funès was the most popular star and seeing him in his gendarme uniform again had in 1968 a sort of back-to-the-roots feeling. The previous "Troops in New York" had severely overused his shtick at the expense of the six comedic talents surrounding him. But after several minutes watching him looking for his daughter, the formula got rapidly tiresome.

This time, the troop is back in its territory and there's just something in the performances that make you feel the actors are having fun being in good old Saint Tropez, each of the six other players is given a substantial part and even Galabru is more than a simple foil to De Funès' tantrums, it's just as if there was some maturity in the writing, something that took in consideration De Funes' previous successes, the best movies never relied totally on his performances and talent, no matter how good he was. And yes, "The Troops Gets Married" can't be labeled as the De Funes show, which is a good thing.

The film opens with the vacation rush (I was surprised that the English term was used at that time) with a sort of incognito assignment consisting on apprehending the vacationers who feel like the road belongs to them, the gendarmes all disguise as peaceful tourists and hitchhikers and the situations lead to a series of amusing gags, but even when they don't inspire belly laughs, they lead up to one of the greatest moment of the series, the first meeting between Ludovic Cruchot and the rich widow Josepha, played by Claude Gensac. There are a few pivotal movies in De Funès' career, this is one of them.

The moment's iconic value goes beyond the simple introduction of Josepha. Claude Gensac, who passed away on Decembrer 2016, has starred in ten De Funes' movies. In seven of them, she was his wife and that includes four of the 'troops' movie. There has always been in Gensac an illuminating smile, an optimism that played like the perfect counterpart to De Funès' excitability, she was the sweet and joyful yin to his tempestuous and grumbling yang. When she gets in the screen, you almost forget about the daughter and you're glad that the Troops' series stop relying on the youth- oriented tropes.

And what makes this film so memorable is that it is the only time where we see a love- at-first-sight moment between the two actors, when we can enjoy the romance growing between each of them, seeing the hot-tempered Cruchot suddenly disarmed by the sweet Josepha. It's actually one of the rare if not the unique instance where you can see De Funès in love, which for the first time gives him an excuse to tone down his usual mimics and let the other characters play for the jokes, even his daughter becomes the clown for one moment before she ends up getting along with Josepha.

De Funès wasn't exactly the romantic type and always refused to play the part of the cheating husband, but there was just the right chemistry with Gensac, even his wife Jeanne De Funès approved. And the film manages to translate their genuine chemistry into one of the most memorable gags of French comedy, the electric shock whenever Cruchot kisses Josepha's hand or when their heads accidentally collide during a friendly tea party. This thunderbolt moment is the film stealing the thunder of the first opus, outshining its humor with its heart, it is played a lot but never overplayed like a great running gag. It's also one of my first memories of De Funès.

If the film centers on the new relationship, it also enriches the small rivalry between Adjutant Gerber and Cruchot, providing a nice middle-act subplot where for some fifteen minutes, Cruchot is promoted and manages to outrank Gerber, when Cruchot makes his entrance as the new superior is again a great moment for laughs. The scene allows De Funès to replay his best part, the guy with a grandstanding and patronizing attitude but who inevitably cowers down when things back to normal. For the sake of continuity, Gerber becomes the chief again (they could have kept it longer but never mind) after the interlude provided one of the funniest sequence of the series, so the contrived aspect is excused anyway.

So I enjoyed "The Troops Gets Married" overall, the film doesn't break many grounds, there's not much of a plot and the late kidnapping is just an opportunity to meet again the smiling crazy driving Sister Clotilde (and this time, she's driving on a side-car). And the film ends with the perfect happy note, the marriage between Cruchot and Josepha and a funny punchline involving a funny double entendre between Cruchot and Geber. The score by Raymond Lefevre is a good work and the film is nice and enjoyable family entertainment. It is possibly the best sequel of the series, if not the most enjoyable.