Sixty years after its release, Le Gendarme à Saint-Tropez is still as funny as ever. Perhaps a little outdated but eminently cult, the film that confirmed the popularity of Louis De Funès also saw the acting debut of Patrice Laffont. The latter bears witness to his encounter with one of the greatest French comic actors.
The Gendarme of Saint-Tropez, a cult film released in 1964 and which will be rebroadcast on M6 on Friday July 12 at 9:10 p.m., is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year – more than the career of its main actor Louis De Funès. For the occasion, Patrice Laffont – who played Jean-Luc, one of the young people from Saint-Tropez, who will end up marrying the gendarme’s daughter – gave an interview to our colleagues from TV Star. He talks about his beginnings as an actor, his experience on the film and his relationship with Louis De Funès.
Patrice Laffont talks about his meeting with Louis De Funès at the time of filming Gendarme in Saint-Tropez
At 25, Patrice Laffont was hired to play the fiancé of the daughter of the Gendarme. No one yet imagines the posterity that awaits the film and Louis De Funès, although already known, is not yet the star that he will soon become. The future TV host then takes off for Saint-Tropez with the group of young actors and Louis De Funès takes a dislike to them from the start. “He couldn’t sack us because he thought we were little idiots. It must be said that, as soon as we hear ‘Cut!’, we were going to the beach, it was driving him crazy! He also knew that we had stolen cars from the production and had folded them…“, testifies Patrice Laffont after specifying that the beach was forbidden to actors”because tanned faces tended to look gray on the film of the time“.
“He never made me laugh“: Patrice Laffont discusses his relationship with the humor of Louis De Funès
While the young actors “didn’t give a damn about the movie, what we wanted was to have a laugh” – as Patrice Laffont confided to our colleagues – Louis De Funès was known for being very rigorous in his work. In any case, this meeting will never be repeated, Patrice Laffont does not play in the rest of the Constable and will rarely watch his former colleague on television. “De Funès had a lot of talent but, for some reason, he never made me laugh.“, he explains to TV Star. “Perhaps this is due to his hostility on The gendarme… Besides, when they make a documentary about him and they ask me to testify, I tend to refuse because I would only say bad things about him. He really is not a good memory for me“, he concluded.
