Jean Girault

Biography

Jean Girault (1924-1982) was a French film director and screenwriter best known for mainstream comedy. He worked as a writer on films from the early 1950s and made his debut as a director in 1960, going on to direct more than thirty features before his death.

For much of the 1950s he wrote comedy screenplays, which gave him a practical grounding in how French studios built commercial hits. He moved behind the camera in 1960 with light comedies, and over the following years became a dependable director for producers looking for box-office success. His most famous work is the series of films starring Louis de Funès as the gendarme Cruchot, beginning with The Troops of St. Tropez in 1964, which became one of the biggest comic phenomena in French cinema and spawned several sequels, including Gendarme in New York and Le gendarme se marie. Girault also directed Les grandes vacances (1967), again with De Funès, along with comedies such as Le pollo de mi mujer-era titles like The Gorillas and Let's Rob the Bank from 1964.

His style relies on comic rhythm, tangled situations and the work of his performers rather than on a distinctive authorial vision, and his films are valued above all for their ability to connect with audiences. He worked closely with De Funès on many of the actor's biggest successes.

His career continued until the end of his life: in 1979 he directed The Gendarme and the Extra-Terrestrials, and Le gendarme et les gendarmettes was released posthumously in 1982. He died that year, aged 58, of tuberculosis. He is now remembered mainly for the gendarme series, which remains a reference point for French comedy of the 1960s and 1970s.

Key films

• The Troops of St. Tropez (1964): the first film in the series, with De Funès as a policeman obsessed with order on the Côte d'Azur.
• Gendarme in New York (1965): the gendarme crosses the Atlantic in a sequel that widened the series' humour.
• Les grandes vacances (1967): a family comedy with De Funès as a strict teacher on holiday with his children.
• Le gendarme se marie (1968): the most popular entry in the series, focused on Cruchot's family life.
• Jo (1971): a comic caper built around an unexpected corpse.
• My Friend the Extraterrestrial (1981): one of his last films, a comic science-fiction story.