The Gendarme in New York (1965)

Sergeant Cruchot and his colleagues from Saint-Tropez are dispatched to a law enforcement congress in New York, and the resulting ninety minutes consist largely of Louis de Funès misplacing his dignity in assorted American locations. The picture is a sequel, a travel farce, and a delivery mechanism for its star's escalating facial contortions. It has no interest in instructing anyone about anything. The camera follows a man who has lost track of his daughter and his luggage, and the film considers this sufficient.

Certain sequences might raise an eyebrow in a less careful audit. Nicole stows away on the SS France, prompting paternal panic, and the plot conscripts her as a romantic prize for an Italian gendarme whose family operates a deli staffed by Sicilian relatives played for broad comic menace. Later, father and daughter evade pursuers by dressing as a Chinese couple in Chinatown. These are costumes and caricatures in service of a chase. None of it amounts to a statement about representation, racial identity, or the position of women. The film's only consistent position is that Italians are loud and Chinatown is a convenient place to hide. A psychiatrist appears, delivers a Freudian interlude, and exists solely so that Cruchot can be declared sane by a man in a bow tie.

The film was the fourth most popular release in France that year, which tells us what audiences wanted in 1965 and nothing about what they believed. There is no environmental sermon, no economic grievance, no advocacy of any kind. It is a comedy about a man who cannot convince anyone of what he has plainly seen. We classify it accordingly, with the mild gratitude of a critic who has spent the afternoon watching something that asks for nothing but laughter.