Gendarme in New York (Le Gendarme à New York)

Jean Girault directed Gendarme in New York (Le Gendarme à New York), a French-Italian comedy from 1965. It follows the unexpected 1964 hit The Troops of St. Tropez and is the second of six films about the Saint-Tropez gendarmes. Louis de Funès suggested a trip abroad so the sequel would feel different from the first.

De Funès returns as the short-tempered yet likeable gendarme Ludovic Cruchot. He and his brigade head to New York for an international gendarmerie congress, not knowing that his daughter Nicole has slipped into the party uninvited. Geneviève Grad plays Nicole. The brigade includes Michel Galabru, Jean Lefebvre, Christian Marin and the double act Grosso and Modo, while France Rumilly reappears as a nun.

The trip let De Funès salute silent-film greats he admired, such as Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, and a ballet sequence between policemen and street thugs sends up West Side Story. The Atlantic crossing was shot aboard the liner France, other scenes in New York and at the Billancourt studios. Paul Mauriat and Raymond Lefèvre wrote the score. Critics were divided, but it sold 5.4 million tickets in France, a respectable result for a sequel. The series continued with Le Gendarme se marie in 1968.