An absolute triumph in theaters in 1959 with more than 8.8 million spectators, “The Cow and the Prisoner” featured Fernandel as an escaped prisoner, flanked by an adorable poor creature, the cow Marguerite, who was nevertheless destined to a disastrous fate. .
Charles Bailly, prisoner of war, is not particularly unhappy in the German farm where he has worked for three years, but he misses his wife and the nostalgia for his country is stronger than the friendship of the farmer’s wife… He decides so take the key to the fields…
To avoid the failure of his comrades who attempted it, Bailly imagines taking the path to freedom, in prison uniform, with a cow on a leash… Flanked by the animal called Marguerite, which he willingly giving up the farmer’s wife, Charles takes the direction of France, and undertakes a long march which should last three months…
Author of around twenty short films between 1947 and 1950, Henri Verneuil made a decisive meeting in the person of Fernandel, who agreed to star in his first feature, La Table aux crevés, in 1951. From their collaboration were subsequently born several successes (The Forbidden Fruit, The Five-Legged Sheep, The Great Chef…), the most emblematic of which remains The Cow and the Prisoner.
Authentic news item reported in 1945 in a work by author Maurice Dekobra, The Blue Parakeet, The Cow and the Prisoner was an absolute triumph in theaters, with more than 8.8 million spectators. The biggest success at the French Box Office in 1959, the film also revived emotional and painful memories among spectators, although softened by the presence of Marguerite, barely fourteen years after the end of the war.
Three years earlier, La Traversée de Paris, Claude Autant-Lara’s masterpiece, had on the contrary sparked a lively controversy, breaking several taboos in its description of the Occupation, with its black humor, its representation of the black market as well as than that of collaborators/war profiteers.
The Cyclops Films
There is always that The Cow and the Prisoner was the first big commercial success for Henri Verneuil, who had to review no less than 600 cows to find the rare pearl, the one who would “incarnate” Marguerite.
This poor creature, who actually walked the 200 km between Munich and Stuttgart with Fernandel during the film, had to end its days in the slaughterhouse at the end of filming, where Verneuil had to return it to its owner. But the filmmaker energetically opposed the animal’s disastrous fate, and found a meadow for the bovine star in Normandy where she could peacefully end her days.