Le caïd

Le Caïd, released in English-speaking markets as The Boss, is a 1960 French crime comedy directed by Bernard Borderie, adapted by Jean Bernard-Luc from Claude Orval's novel Le Grand Caïd. It puts popular French comedian Fernandel in an unusually shadowy setting, playing a man thrust into the middle of gangland power games.

The supporting cast — Barbara Laage, Georges Wilson, Marcel Bozzuffi and Albert Rémy among them — grounds the film's blend of underworld intrigue and Fernandel's familiar comic persona. Received with only middling notice on release, it nonetheless stands as a representative sample of the French crime-comedy hybrids common in commercial cinema of the early 1960s.