Just over 100 years ago ago, Mack Sennett hit cinema pay dirt and spawned American silent film comedy when he introduced audiences to the hapless Keystone Cops, forever the butt of the joke. Chaplin and Keaton and their fellow silent film comedians likewise mocked police incompetence and, more politically, condemned at least implicitly their treatment of the underdog. Nowadays such attitudes are rarer in film comedy, but certainly not in the work of French prankster and provocateur Rémi Gaillard, whose YouTube videos have had over a billion hits.

Here’s one of his most popular compilations, showing his joy at taunting the police in segments reminiscent of those early chase scenes where the cops were doing all the chasing. “I do it for France!” Gaillard is fond of shouting. Ha!

You can see many, many more videos at his web site, and of course buy tons of anarchistic merchandise.