The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.
In a college, three friends form a secret society. Their objective - going to America. One night, after one of their secret meetings, one of them sees a man coming out from a wall. The next day, after he talks about it, he disappears. Then, the second one vanishes. Are they gone to their dreams?...
Debt-ridden painter Michel is overcome with joy at discovering that he has just won 1 million florins in the Dutch lottery, but almost immediately, he discovers that his softhearted girlfriend, Béatrice, has given away his jacket containing the winning ticket to an elderly petty thief. Soon...
Jules Vachon, a pharmacist, has two sons, Gabriel, a steady-minded young man dedicated to his job in the pharmacy, and Gaston, a good for nothing whose only talent is to seduce rich women and take money from their pockets. But it is Gaston who is hailed as a great man when he returns to his native...
A husband, exasperated by his wife, spanks her without paying attention to the open window in front of which he is. He is annoyingly surprised to discover the next day that the scene has been photographed by a neighbor, and that the image is circulating in Paris. A debate then ensues: is this an...
Mr. and Mrs. Noblet run a boarding house on the French Riviera. One day, they are led by circumstances to welcome a little boy Pierre, whose father is in jail, into their home. Which makes Louise Noblet all the happier as she can't have children herself. But, after a while, Pierre's father is...
A local man raised two boys. One is his son and the other is that of a rich industrialist, to get the bonus to the unhappy father, he gives his own son a lazy scoundrel, to the tearful father and decides to keep the other boy, but the truth does not soon to burst.
Suppose lost and found objects could talk... But they can! At least four of them... : -A statuette of Osiris remembers how two ex-lovers, a model and a good for nothing who claimed to be an Egyptologist, met again one Christmas Eve. -A violin has things to say about Raoul, a humble policeman who...
A trio of seedy gangsters, Gigi, Totor and Jo, manage to snatch a suitcase of diamonds, which they promptly lose. The precious luggage is recovered by Ernest Mamourette, a distracted salesman. The police suspect him of being behind the hold-up and the safe. Gigi reappears under the identity of a...
Claire Buisson becomes enamored with Gerard and soon afterwords she becomes pregnant. Gerard advises her to abort the child but, at the last moment, Claire decides to keep her child and leaves for her sister's place in the province.
The young Countess Rita wishes to visit the slums of Paris. A matchmaker decides to arrange for her a little staging that allows the young dazed to believe that she has really spent an evening among the men in the middle. Things go wrong through the fault of a genuine apache.
Anatole, quivering nostrils and greedy lips, is the resourceful clerk of Mrs. Paufilat, a butcher. It takes a fancy to take on the identity of the Paufilat son, Paul. He must then undergo the assaults of the tumultuous Germaine, exhilarated by the money of Paul Paufilat.
A penniless young musician seduces a millionaire American widow, lives with her in her hotel for an entire day, spends lavishly, ridicules the suitors and lands an exceptional deal that finally allows him to marry her.
Endive-Meunier, a prosperous silk dealer from Lyon has an affair with his secretary he tries hard to keep secret. One day, he nevertheless accepts to accompany her to the seaside resort of Coeur-sur-Mer. Unfortunately for him, once there, he finds himself in the presence of Claudius Paquito, the...
In the early 1950s, the popular radio show "La Kermesse aux Étoiles", hosted by the famous Jean Nohain, mixing lottery games and performances of various artists, will be disrupted by the adventures of a man and his fiancée seeking to recover a dangerous bottle of perfume (explosive) which was...
Henri, a basically honest fellow, accepts to work for a gang of burglars only to revenge himself on Fournier-Salville, a wealthy businessman who once ruined him. His role will be to become Fournier-Saville's majordomo and at the same time to inform the burglars so as to facilitate their work. But...
A bossy count has trouble marrying off any of his six sons. When one of them, Adam, finally makes wedding arrangements, something happens to his bride to be: she develops amnesia after an accident.
King Louis XI tries to unify France by all means fair or foul, which does not please his powerful rival Charles the Bold. It is against this troubled backdrop that the loves of the daughter of a wealthy bourgeois and the king's god-daughter Jeanne Fouquet and knight Robert Cottereau unfurl in spite...
