For years now, Chief inspector Gustave Picard has been trying to bring down Salviati, the dreadful leader of a drug-selling gang. Lucienne Préville, an informer who works for him, has infiltrated the gang but her position is dangerous. On the other hand, Scoppa, Salviati's former right-hand man,...
Émile Boulard is a props man in a Paris movie studio. He has a wife, Suzanne. Or to be more accurate, let's say he HAD a wife since she left him fifteen years before, allegedly ... to go buy a post stamp. But now that their daughter Martine , who lives with her, is old enough to marry, she...
An operetta baron has teamed up with a mechanic to carry out insurance scams. During one of their shots, they come up against Boulot, a drunken but clever driver, who ends up having them arrested after revealing their ride.
Bitru is a carefree fellow who, one day, decides to buy a houseboat on the River Seine. He moves there and starts living surrounded by a circle of colorful friends. Among them, the daughter of an auto maker but also a group of scientists who have developed "Aqua Simplex", a device that could enable...
For some time, the police have been on the trail of a mysterious burglar who has evaded capture whilst executing one daring robbery after another. No one has any clue as to the identity of this elusive criminal and he has come to be known as Monsieur Personne.
Agnès Bonnardet leaves her parents to marry Claude Sironi, a painter who becomes famous but loses his talent. Meanwhile Agnes acquires a style of her own as an artist, which makes Claude jealous of his young wife. One day, he sends one of his own paintings to the Bazar de la Charité, a very...
Doctor Planturel who is leaving for a vacation, hires a new servant too hastily. Now, Victor, the alleged domestic, is in fact a robber whose only aim is to burglar the doctor's house. But when a client comes to consult Planturel, he must keep up the appearances. That is why he asks his accomplice...
Eusèbe Bonbonneau, a solicitor's clerk, learns one day that a candidate bearing his name runs for election as a member of parliament. In fact Frazier, a crooked businessman, has urged an accomplice to impersonate Eusèbe, in order to obtain, through this straw man, authorizations for the creation...
A soccer enthusiast like his father, Martin Lambert is the (gifted) goalkeeper of the local team. He falls in love with Jeanette and soon marries her. Alongside a happy marital life, Martin becomes a successful professional. Which proves a mixed blessing since fame makes him vain and haughty and...
Marie, a young bourgeois and Jean, a cargo sailor have an affair, she becomes pregnant but he has to go back to the sea. Marie leaves for Paris where she meets Pierre and marries him. War breaks out, Jean and Pierre will befriend each other on the front.
In Pisa, chance forces an old bookseller out of his isolation. He unleashes the fury of the tenants of his building, he undergoes the rigors of the law and he is involved in the adventure of two lovers whose marriage he arranges.
Marceline is pretty but inconstant. She has a brother, eccentric as well as invading, who serves as a go-between between the fickle young woman and her lovers. She has been the mistress of Richard for a while when Jeff, an engaging but but unrepentant dreamer, falls madly in love with her....
A student monitor in a high school in the French provinces has no control over the pupils. He is in love with the caretaker's daughter but his superior, the Dean of Discipline, is also his love rival. Now, the two men are sent on military temporary duty and irony has it that in the Army the Dean is...
Boule de Gomme is a child actor. On the set of the film he is shooting he gets on the nerves of the director and of the all crew by being off the beat when he is asked to cry or to laugh. Nobody manages to reason with him, with the exception of a grip who uses the rough way. A good beating and...
Bastien and Ségard decide to leave France for Canada. They buy tickets aboard a rickety craft, the Tenacity, that never quite seems able to leave port. While stuck there they both fall for the innkeeper's daughter, which causes them to rethink their Canadian notions.
On the borders of the desert, Péhu, a rather blunt creature on the verge of death, confesses to Charles Sigouane that some time before he stole and killed for the sake of a woman named Marie. Péhu recovers against all odds and returns to France with a view to finding Marie and to retrieve a loot...
Around 1750, in the Dauphiné not far from the Swiss border, a cooper, tired of the injustices affecting the peasants crushed by taxes, went into revolt. Louis Mandrin, a handsome fellow without fear and without reproach, puts himself out of the law by refusing to obey the local nobility. The...
