You necessarily know the Gendarme de Saint Tropez saga. But did you know that there is a Gendarmerie and cinema museum open in the city since 2016? It also includes many memories of shooting movies!
With a regularity of Swiss cuckoo clock, the TV channels lock during the summer the six shutters of the saga of the Gendarme. This year, M6 is in charge of the loop, which ends this Friday August 12 with the double program broadcast of Gendarme and the extraterrestrials and Gendarme and the gendarmettes. It does not matter that the quality of the films declines with the episodes; the public, meanwhile, always responds to the call of the chief sergeant Cruchot in front of his TV set.
If in Saint Tropez, we calm down and drink cool, we are also proud of its Gendarmerie and cinema museum! Why not take the opportunity to visit it, if you are in the area during the holidays?
A barracks transformed into a museum
Formerly a Gendarmerie barracks opened in 1879, it was deserted by its occupants in 2003, to occupy more modern and better adapted buildings. The idea of transforming the building was born in 2012. After two years of work, the doors were able to reopen.
Three floors are to be visited: the ground floor dedicated to the history of the Saint-Tropez gendarmerie and the building, the first floor to the saga of the Gendarmes from 1964 to 1982 with a good number of video testimonies, period posters, photos filming, film extracts, and many accessories from the saga, such as costumes.
There is even a copy of the script “The Gendarme and the Emperor”, an opus that will never see the light of day. Finally, the top floor is devoted to the myth of Saint-Tropez in the cinema. Because no, it’s not just Louis de Funès; there is also Brigitte Bardot, in And God Created Woman…
On August 26, 2014, the city of Saint-Tropez celebrated the inauguration of its exhibition “100 years for Louis de Funès, 50 years for The Gendarme of Saint-Tropez and the Ford Mustang”. For the event, three of the four gendarmettes were invited to deliver their memories to the public.
Scheduled for 2015, the opening of the museum was postponed to June 2016. Members of the Gendarme de Saint-Tropez film team, including France Rumilly, Patrick Préjean and Rémy Julienne, took part in the inauguration.
In the temporary exhibition room, located on the ground floor, the museum is currently paying homage to Michel Galabru, who passed away in January 2016, in an exhibition entitled Michel Galabru, an actor on all fronts.
You can find all the information about the museum hereincluding prices and opening hours.