The Cow and I

During the Second World War, French soldier Charles Bailly is held in Germany and put to work on a farm. Unwilling to sit out the rest of the war away from home, he plans to walk back to France, and his cover for the journey is a cow named Marguerite, which he leads along as though taking her out to pasture. The pair set off across Germany together, and the cow becomes both his disguise and his companion on a long, obstacle-filled route toward the border. The film is a French and Italian production directed by Henri Verneuil from a screenplay he wrote with Jean Manse and Henri Jeanson, and it stars Fernandel as Charles, with René Havard, Bernard Musson, Ellen Schwiers, Pierre-Louis and Franziska Kinz in supporting roles.

The Cow and I was released in December 1959 and runs just under two hours. It was the earliest of Verneuil's films listed here, coming before It Happened All Night and Love and the Frenchwoman in 1960, and it therefore belongs to the first phase of a career that later included A Monkey in Winter, Any Number Can Win, Weekend at Dunkirk and The Sicilian Clan. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.1 from around 1,900 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.7 from a much smaller base of some 140 ratings, a gap that suggests the film is better remembered by the audience that has sought it out over the years.