Pasha

Jean Gabin is the hard to swallow Inspector Joss, an impenetrable and conscientious agent who is disposes by all his means to catch the intellectual author of the murder of Albert Gouvion, an profound friend of his childhood, accustomed to request favors, since the early years, and now with his death, Joss is disposed to take his own personal revenge.

So he begins to establish the frequented places, his friend used to visit and so he meets Natalie, an alluring girl, whom his friend loved profoundly. So with her consent, he will plot a very clever plan which allows him to set up the criminal, avoiding the well known legal entanglements, that would let to set him free.

The smart script and the powerful presence of this legendary actor justifies plainly you to have it.

Don't miss one of the most forgotten and important French thrillers in this second half of the sixties.

Jean Gabin in his perfect 'blasé' police chief role, surrounded by a great set of actors in a very fun story.

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Behind the apparently meaningless title of Georges Lautner's Le Pacha (it roughly translates as the guv'nor) is a very decent 1968 thriller that marks the beginning of the end of the old school policier. Jean Gabin's the old school cop nearing retirement they've already written the speeches and ordered his cake who's investigating an armoured car robbery and tracking down the gang member who has killed all his partners and everyone else on the inside on the job, including Gabin's childhood friend on the force. Less than enthused by the possibility of the killer getting off on a technicality or pleading insanity and on the assumption that the worst his superiors can do to him this late in his career is take away his cake, he decides to set him up for a more permanent sentence at the hands of a rival gang...

Running a lean 85 minutes, it's a well crafted number that hits all the expected notes quite satisfactorily without ever running the risk of being a classic, with Gabin a little bit more animated than usual for this late stage in his career at times perhaps a little too animated when he overdoes the bulging eyes. He's the kind of cop who's running out of people to share childhood memories with and almost bemused by modern fads, particularly when interviewing suspects in an outrageous hippie nightclub (the film's trailer includes a great unused take of a dancer mussing up his hair that makes the take used in the film of him steering a wide berth of the gyrating loon even funnier). Like its star, the film is also stuck in mid-winter, using its snowy Christmas locales much more effectively in its setpieces than some of the interiors (the police station in particular looks like a 60s TV studio).

At the times the transitional nature of the film from old to new French cinema is a bit clumsy, not least the terrible backprojection in a few of the car scenes with Gabin, but they're more niggles than real problems. Lautner's handling of the opening robbery is excellent, as is Andre Pousse's stone-cold elimination of the hired help, stopping only briefly after one murder to check his horse racing bets on the TV and throwing in a neat spin on the getting-rid-of-the-car scene from Psycho with Brigitte Bardot singing Harley Davidson on the car radio. There's also an effective score by Serge Gainsbourg, who also makes a brief appearance (one of his backing musicians is also a small time crook and informant): at times it's the kind of gradual monotonous escalation that would probably be infuriating on a record but compliments the film surprisingly well. Gaumont's region-free French Blu-ray offers excellent picture quality with optional English subtitles and a generous helping of extras documentary with many of the key players and extensive archive interviews with Gabin, interview with Gabin biographer André Brunelin, audio commentary by Lautner and Olivier Marchal and trailer though sadly none of these are subtitled in English.

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