Helmut Käuntner was one of the first directors who heralded a revival of the post-war German cinema : "die letze Brücke" (the last bridge)(1954) showed Maria Schell fraternize with the enemy ,the Yougoslav resistant fighters ,in WW2 .....
"Die Gans von Sedan" (= the geese von Sedan ) is another pacifist work ,but treated as a light comedy ;do not let you be fooled by its rating : it was really a courageous move , fifteen years after WW2 ,and before the French-German reconciliation in the mid-sixties ,thanks to Konrad Adenauer and general de Gaulle .
Hardy Krüger ,who was fluent in English and in French is not supposed to speak the Victor Hugo's language in this movie and he's taught some words by a grumpy peasant (the marvelous Françoise Rosay); the German actor was drafted into the Hitlerian youth ,a thing he would bitterly remember all his life and led her to play in such works as "les dimanches de Ville D'Avray" aka "Cybele " or "le franciscain de Bourges "....or this film ....
......which is a truly pacifist fable ,reductio ad absurdum that geese who walk in a herd are not dumber than soldiers marching behind their horse-riding officer (Noel Roquevert ,who appears briefly ,makes his scenes count).When two privates take off their uniform to swim in the river ,and when they get out of it ,half-naked ,they look the same :they burst out laughing and they try to communicate ,proof positive it's better to teach people foreign languages than to killl;against all odds,they fraternize: why would a hairdresser have a thing about a peasant?
Uniforms make the man (and not the other way around)at war : Fritz is mistaken for a French grunt by the peasant and her lovely granddaughter (Dany Carrel) because he's put on the French uniform by mistake : he has to pretend he is dumb,because he can't utter a single world in the language ; the same goes for French Leon (Jean Richard) who wears the German uniform :"he 's the only one ,the officer yells, who did not flee from the enemy ,a true hero!"
Both Leon and Fritz are naive people overtaken by events ,who do not have a clue about Napoleon the Third 's and Bismarck's politics ; the only moment when they want to fight,it's for the pretty peasant girl :" but don't you wage your war in my house!" grandma shouts.
Although the movie loses steam in its last part , its bitter ending is moving : one has to carry on the fight because men in high places have decided so.
