Le pacha

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.

The movie is an unanticipated gem! I was expecting something of a hybrid between A. Delon's "Un Flic" and "Le Samouraï", but this one is fast paced and stylish. I enjoyed the inserts with "hippies" dancing and The Serge cameo, both lending some documentary feel to the movie. It is also one for a fan of coolest mid-century period, with characters carved out of the 40ies b&w gangster movies. Gabin's character is funny, policemen are efficient and gangsters dull-n-dumb: feels good. Music is an added bonus, especially if you pay attention to the words of the song that Serge sings: nice refrain to the plot. In short, great contemporary mix, very entertaining and a bit touching.

Well, it may possibly not have aged that well, notably the story line, that's pretty linear, but this film nevertheless has a few decent assets.

First, the cast, granted you get Gabin playing lead, or rather freewheeling lead, but look at the rest of the cast : an impressive array of distinctive supporting actors, many of which can be spotted in many other films of the day, who do a spendid job in here, even when silent. For example, André Pousse has the perfect face for the ruthless gangster job he does in the movie.

Second asset is the mood, a sort of sticky, foggy, terribly square version of the late sixties. The final scene in a rundown factory is truly awesome. This atmosphere is enhanced by Serge Gainsbourg's splendidly sober score (Gainsbourg himself appears in one scene, singing the striking "Requiem pour un con"), based on mesmerising percussion loops (way ahead of its time) or very gentle hammond organ parts. Oh and one song by Brigitte Bardot ("Harley Davidson") is also featured as background to one scene.

Third, which can only be fully appreciated with a good command of French, is the script and dialogue, where Michel Audiard delivers some of his hilarious trademark one-liners, such as "le jour où on mettra les cons sur orbite, ben t'as pas fini de tourner" ["the day they'll put gits on orbit, you'll be far from stopping to revolve"], which rely on slang and adequate delivery to give an unmistakable texture to the lines.

The only real downers here are the embarrassingly "hip" nightclub scenes, complete with sitar-laden raga-rock, that are pretty unwatchable to today's standards.

Last point : it's pretty violent for its time, but in an almost choreographed way, which could in a way evoke "Spaghetti" Westerns or Sam Peckinpah's work...

An enjoyable slice of 1960s french cinema, simply does the job.

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")

and the plot may seem familiar from a dozen other crime/thriller movies you have seen, but the character is played by an aging Jean Gabin, who does one of his best performances I can recall. The film depicts well Paris night-life, and the dangerous links between clubs, girls, racketeers, and the Police, in a realistic approach to mid-1960's life.