Le pacha

"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.

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")

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.

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.

This was another Jean Gabin vehicle which often turned up on Italian TV; having decided to check it out, I'm glad I did because it's a pretty good policier!

Despite his advancing age, the star is wholly believable as the dogged Police Commissioner (the "Pacha" of the title) - out to avenge his childhood, albeit shady, friend - who's also something of an amiable curmudgeon. The film features an elaborate daylight robbery sequence - after which one member of the gang eliminates all his associates in order to keep the loot for himself (one of them is pushed inside his car onto thin ice which naturally breaks and engulfs him)! - and is fast-paced, and short, enough to never overstay its welcome. Besides, it's given a tremendous boost by a modern percussion-heavy score by celebrated performer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg (who even appears as himself during a recording session of the tune heard over the opening credits!).

There's also a hilarious scene in which the old-fashioned Gabin visits a hippie club - in search of a girl (Dany Carrel of MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN [1960]) who, apart from being a fling of Gabin's deceased colleague, is a link to the robbery mentioned above since she's the sister of one of the culprits (now also dead). Therefore, she and Gabin conspire to trap the man responsible for both deeds and the film ends with an indiscriminate shoot-out - punctuated by an ominous organ drone - in an abandoned warehouse (which curiously anticipates the climax of THE FRENCH CONNECTION [1971]!).