Le Gendarme en balade

Le Gendarme en balade is a 1970 French comedy film directed by Jean Girault and the fourth installment of the Gendarme series starring Louis de Funès as the gendarme Ludovic Cruchot. In the story, Cruchot and his Saint-Tropez brigade are forced into early retirement, but they put their uniforms back on when they learn that their colleague Fougasse has become amnesiac. The film was released in France on 28 October 1970.^{1 • 2}

Production

The film was written by Jean Girault, Jacques Vilfrid, and Richard Balducci, who had already written Le Gendarme se marie (1968) together, and produced by the Société Nouvelle de Cinématographie (SNC).^{4 • 7} Raymond Lefèvre composed the music and Pierre Montazel was the director of photography.^{4 • 8}

Shooting near Saint-Tropez. Filming took place in 1970 in the area around Saint-Tropez. A French television news report of 20 June 1970 recorded Louis de Funès, in hippy disguise, being interviewed on the set of a beach sequence involving hippies.⁹

Reception and box office

The film drew about 4.9 million admissions in France. This was a solid result but clearly below the three previous episodes, and it was the first film of the series to receive negative criticism from part of the press and the public.⁵ It nevertheless finished at the top of the 1970 French box office, slightly ahead of Le mur de l'Atlantique; only the first film of the series had previously achieved that placement.⁶

Intended finale. The comedy was originally meant to close the saga, under the title Le Gendarme en retraite. The series in fact continued with two further films, Le Gendarme et les Extra-terrestres (1979) and Le Gendarme et les Gendarmettes (1982).^{5 • 12}

Place in the series

Le Gendarme en balade is the last film in which Jean Lefebvre plays Fougasse. After a long-running conflict with Louis de Funès, aggravated by the cutting of his scenes in Le Gendarme se marie, Lefebvre was replaced by Maurice Risch in the later episodes; Christian Marin (Merlot) also did not return.^{5 • 6} Geneviève Grad, who played Cruchot's daughter Nicole in the earlier films, is absent from this episode as well.⁶

Critics have generally treated the film as the point where the series began to lose momentum. The Larousse film dictionary calls it simply the fourth film of the series, in which the retired gendarmes re-form their brigade to cure their amnesiac comrade, "and everything starts again".² Reviewers have pointed to recycled gags, flashbacks, and a sketch-like structure as signs of fatigue, while noting that the de Funès–Galabru pairing still carries the film.¹³ AlloCiné records a spectator rating of 2.7 out of 5 from more than 4,000 votes.³

References

1. Notice de titre conventionnel "Le gendarme en balade (film)", Bibliothèque nationale de France
2. le Gendarme en balade, Larousse, Dictionnaire mondial des films
3. Le gendarme en balade, film 1970, AlloCiné
4. Notice bibliographique Le gendarme en balade, Bibliothèque nationale de France
5. Le Gendarme en balade : quand Jean Lefebvre accusait Louis de Funès de lui voler la vedette, CinéSérie
6. Le Gendarme en balade (M6) : les adieux définitifs de Louis de Funès à Jean Lefebvre, Toutelatele
7. Le Gendarme en balade : séances à Paris et en Île-de-France, L'Officiel des spectacles
8. LE GENDARME EN BALADE, Cinéma-français.fr
9. Film : "Le Gendarme en balade", INA, JT 20H, 20 June 1970
10. Le gendarme en balade, Télé Star
11. Le Gendarme en balade en streaming, JustWatch
12. Pandore en technicolor, l'histoire des gendarmes au cinéma, Gendinfo, Gendarmerie nationale
13. Pas de retraite pour nos gendarmes, critique on SensCritique

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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