Roger Vitrac

Mathias Pascal, saddled with a stupid wife and a nagging mother-in-law, leaves home and is extremely lucky at several gambling resorts. He returns home and discovers that a drowned man, fished out of the river, bears an uncanny likeness to him and is being buried by his family as him. This, to him, is a pleasant turn of events and he goes to Rome, where he falls in love with Louise Paleari. Count Papiano, a jealous suitor of Louise's, threatens him with arrest unless he produces credentials to prove his identity.

A toymaker in Poland specializes in building lifesize mechanical men. He builds a chess-playing "automaton" to hide a pretty young Polish activist who is being hunted by occupying Russian forces.

Having pulled off a robbery with his friend Maurice, Olivier leaves his mistress Lola and hides out in a small village in the country. He finds work, thanks to a young man named Gilbert, who introduces him to his sister, Monique. Once the robbery has been all but forgotten, Olivier intends to head back to Paris, but before he goes, he steals money from his employer. In Paris, Olivier wants to say a proper goodbye to Lola, but she is being blackmailed by Jérôme, an antique dealer who has recognized a necklace stolen by Olivier. Before returning to Monique, Olivier calls on Jérôme to recover the necklace.

A young woman from the countryside travels to Paris to become an actress. Despite all kinds of difficulties, affronts and emotional adventures, she succeeded in gaining a place in the world of entertainment and becomes a great movie star.

The scene of action embraces Tangier, Toulon and the Mediterranean, where Pierre Fresnay, Rolf Wanka and Kim Peacock, cast as captains of French, German and English boats, respectively, unite to rescue the passengers of a neutral boat that is about to be engulfed in a cloud of poison smoke released by a smuggling ship.

This film is a video-recorded performance of a landmark play from French surrealism, which was staged as a musical for the first time ever. Libretto and music are by the well-known Greek composer Stamatis Kraounakis. He himself portrays the main role of Victor: a child prodigy from a bourgeois family, who, on his ninth birthday, decides to ruin everything, revealing his father's adultery and unraveling all the hypocrisy and family disintegration, as well as dismissing his class.