Les moutons de Panurge

Les moutons de Panurge is a French comedy film directed by Jean Girault, shot in 1960 and released in 1961. The cast features Darry Cowl and Robert Dalban alongside performers such as Claudine Auger, Pierre Mondy, Pascale Roberts and Jean Piat. The film takes its title from the famous episode of Panurge's sheep in Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, a reference long used in French to evoke blindly following the crowd. Girault, who would later become widely known for directing the popular Gendarme comedies starring Louis de Funès, made this picture early in his career, and it stands among the French popular comedies of the early 1960s. It belongs to a period when French comic cinema was moving from postwar theatrical farce toward the lighter mainstream entertainments that defined the decade.