Le pacha

First, it is not the policier who you expect. against the same lines, Jean Gabin in a well known role and the last scenes. it is different for a simple reason - because the sentimental side is well developed, because the presence ( and music) of Serge Gainsbourg and for Dany Carrel performance. and for the flavor of a story political incorrect but solide and coherent and seductive. a film about the justice, friendship and choices. useful for old memories. and for the trip in the frame of a period, with its sensitivities, taste and options. a world. like an refuge.

I think it an error to judge this film on plot alone - the story is the skeleton of a brightly stylized action fantasy which surely owes much to the garish Japanese crime films of the mid '60s. The police offices are not the grimy smoke-stained green-painted reality of battered wood desks and clattering file cabinets, but more nearly resemble the lair of the master-criminal with pivoting wall maps, poster-sized mug shots, and moving silhouettes cast on frosted glass walls. Police activity is a montage of blinking lights, fingers pressing buttons, walls of TV screens, streams of punched tape, and they thunder around the city in streamlined sports cars, not blocky grayish sedans. The inevitable night club is half surrealism, half agitprop performance, through which the stolid and always immaculate protagonist floats like an iceberg. The criminals drag their elaborate apparatus from the trunk of a huge sculptured American car and shoot gouts of flame and bazooka rockets in an eternally gray French winter, setting the snow itself on fire. They pour out of bright yellow mail trucks and blast machine guns at an army of police through obscuring clouds of drifting smoke. Le Pacha deserves to be viewed with fresh eyes because every scene and setting is stimulating and rewarding.

Jean Gabin certainly one the most expressive French actor mostly as Chief of Police whom he embodies perfectly by his coldness and customary sarcasm, he plays the Commissioner Joss Le Pacha about to retirement, but when one of his closest childhood friend now an old Inspector Gouvion (Robert Dalban) was an easy prey on a Robbery, he has been blamed to have facilitate the whole thing, afterwards he is found dead, at first glance he'd allegedly committed suicide, Joss otherwise disagreed of such mindset, thus Joss is willing to prove despite Gouvion was slow and selfish he wasn't engaged in the robbery.

Soon the cunning Commissioner Joss already gathered many clues that seem suggesting straightway into the rough felonious self-called Quinquin (André Pousse), meanwhile he digs all around he meets a Gouvion's lover, the young and beauty Nathalie Villar (Dany Carrel) which to afford Nathalie's life style Gouvion was making blind eye here and there for small offences, a bit bruised about the unforeseen Joss draw up a bold plan to get arrest Quinquin.

The highlight of the movie quite sure are the phasing-out period on late sixties between the new wave of sexual liberalism attached into hippie phenomenon that grabbed the young generation, it's displeased deeply the old fashionable Commissioner that reproves such obnoxious odd behavior, moreover it was put on the screenplay trying display the conflict of two opposite ages, the colorful psychedelic ongoing at Europe against the old customs, so violent and exotic polar picture, directed by Georges Lautner, scored by a fine soundtrack for this period of time only.

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First watch: 2021 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.

In Paris, there is the heist of priceless gems from an armored car and the police escort in an empty road. The criminal Quinquin (André Pousse) delivers the packages of gems to the dealer Marcel le Coréen (Pierre Koulak) and receives the payment for the robbery. Instead of sharing the money with his gang, Quiquin kills them all. Meanwhile, Inspector Joss (Jean Gabin) is investigating the heist and learns that his childhood friend, Inspector Gouvion (Robert Dalban), was the only survivor from the attack. When Gouvion is found dead by a gunshot in his apartment, there is a doubt whether it was an accident or suicide. However, Joss believes he was murdered. When the body of the gangster Leon (Henri Déus) is found shot in a submerged car in a lake, Joss meets his sister Nathalie Villar (Dany Carrel), who works in a nightclub and knows Gouvion, and begins to resolve the cases.

"Pasha" is a great police story in the old days, without the whining of the present days where criminals and corrupt politicians and businessmen are not sent to prison due to the justice systems. Inspector Joss, performed by the excellent Jean Gabin, resolves the problem with the killer Quiquin without any additional cost to the society. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Paxá" ("The Pasha")

"La Pacha", as a whole is OK. It's not quite up to the Melville standard of tough-guy intrigue, but it'll do.

Dampening the initial, promising tempo, unfortunately, is Jean Gabin who seems to be one of those popular actors who's fallen into an artistic pit – and is destined to remain there. If you've seen one of his films, you've seen them all. The exception might be one of his rare comedies, such as "Le Tatoué" (together with Louis de Funès) where he displays an once of versatility. In "La Pacha" however, he's more like a worn-out prop than a necessary figure, and thank God for that for if he'd succeeded in dominating the film too much it would not have been worth seeing at all.

I must also say that Serge Gainsbourg's soundtrack single is annoying: disrupting the story like thrusting a jagged toothpick into your eardrum with un-choreographic jolts, all through the film. It is certainly malplacé and it was quite unnecessary, as the slide-sound mixer was surely available in 1968.