Acting
Three stories about pleasure. The first one is about a man hiding his age behind a mask to keep going to balls and fancying women - pleasure and youth. Then comes the long tale of Madame Tellier taking her girls (whores) to the country for attending her niece's communion - pleasure and purity. And lastly, Jean the painter falls in love with his model - pleasure and death.
Port of Marseille, France, recently liberated from the German yoke. Caught as stowaways aboard a ship, Manon, a young woman who was accused of collaborating with the Nazis, and Robert, a freedom fighter who saved her from reprisals, tell the captain about the many challenges they have had to face in order to survive.
In a village of the Po valley where the earth is hard and life miserly, the priest and the communist mayor are always fighting to be the head of the community. If in secret, they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it is dividing the country. And when the mayor wants his "People's House"; the priest wants his "Garden City" for the poor. Division exist between the richest and the poorest, the pious and the atheists and even between lovers. But if the people are hard as the country, they are good in the bottom of there heart.
An all-knowing interlocutor guides us through a series of affairs in Vienna, 1900. A soldier meets an eager young lady of the evening. Later he has an affair with a young lady, who becomes a maid and does similarly with the young man of the house. The young man seduces a married woman. On and on, spinning on the gay carousel of life.
Identite Judiciare stars Raymond Souplex as wily French police inspector Basquier. The villain is Berthet (Jean Debucourt), a high-ranking government official. Basquier suspects that Berthet is a vicious murderer, but is unable to prove anything thanks to bureaucratic interference. Thus, the good inspector plays a waiting game a la Columbo, hoping for that one fatal slip on the part of the killer. Certain portions of Identite Judiciare proved a bit too intense for American audiences, and were accordingly snipped by the censors.
1947, in France, Antoine and Antoinette, a young couple living in Paris, lead a monotonous existence: he works in a print shop while she is a shop assistant. But one evening, they regain hope: Antoine finds a winning lottery ticket in his girlfriend's handbag. He decides to cash it in, but loses his wallet. What follows is a series of twists and turns that redefine the couple's priorities while forcing them to remain optimistic.
The life story of famed French aviatrix Helene Boucher is detailed in Horizons sans fin (Endless Horizons). Giselle Pascal stars as Boucher, who is first seen in 1930, leaving her millinery shop behind in favor of the wild blue yonder. Though the world of aviation was still essentially an all-male one (despite England's Amy Johnson and America's Amelia Earhart), Boucher perseveres, eventually breaking all existing male and female speed and height records. A bit slow on the uptake in the dramatic scenes, the film soars (no pun intended) during the aerial sequences. Horizons san Fin was the winner of the Catholic Award at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival.
After losing her only child and falling for another man, a wife no longer loves her husband, but he thinks if he takes her back to some of the places they enjoyed in earlier years, it might rekindle their doomed marriage.
In Paris in 1887, Irène works as a governess to Douce, the grand-daughter of the dowager Countess de Bonafé. Douce believes she is in love with Fabien, the handsome manager of the estate. However she cannot hope to marry him because of their class difference. Douce's widowed father, the Count de Bonafé, has a wooden leg, and is infatuated with Irène. Douce discovers that Fabien is planning to flee to Quebec with Irène, and also finds out that the Count has asked Irène to marry him. So Douce tells Fabien this and convinces him to run away with her, causing consternation in the family.
Energetic priest Don Camillo returns to the town of Brescello for more political and personal duels with Communist mayor Peppone.
Breton doctor René Laennec fights tooth and nail against consumption, all the more desperately as his brother Michaud has just died of it.
In France during World War I, Marthe waits for her husband, Jacques, while he fights on the front lines. Marthe then begins a tempestuous affair with 17-year-old François, with whom she had a dalliance before marrying Jacques. Jealous François struggles with the fact that Marthe is married, while she tries to prove her devotion to her young, hotheaded lover. Things become even more complex when Marthe becomes pregnant with Jacques' baby.
Paris, France, December 1946. Jenny Lamour, an ambitious cabaret singer, and Maurice, her extremely jealous pianist husband, become involved in the thorough investigation of the murder of a shady businessman, led by Antoine, a peculiar and methodical police inspector.
Cavalcade D'Amour is divided into three sections, each depicting a romance occurring within the walls of the Chateau de Champs. Legend has it that whoever marries in the Chateau is doomed to an unhappy life. This proves to be the case in 1639 and 1839, but the heroine of the 1939 segment, Corinne Luchaire, is determined to break the jinx. She is convinced that she will prove an unsuitable bride for Claude Dauphin, and he is likewise convinced that he will turn out to be an inadequate groom. But the couple's respective families will not be dissuaded, and the marriage takes place as scheduled? with unexpectedly happy results!
Saul De Tarse is a Roman soldier who is making rough all over. He arrives at the Golgotha when the apostles remove the cross. He ruthlessly persecutes the Christians, even though they are his own friends.
Paris, France. Commissaire Wens is put in charge of the investigation into the murder of one of six friends who, in the past, made a very profitable promise.
Loursat, a lawyer, lives with his daughter Nicole in a sinister and vast bourgeois residence. Abandoned for nearly twenty years by his wife, the brilliant lawyer has sunk into alcoholism and his relationship with his daughter is virtually non-existent. However, one day the corpse of a stranger is discovered in the residence of Loursat. Nicole, who frequents a gang of young people who escape boredom by stealing cars and other objects, is immediately suspected.
Come fly with Peter and Nicole and the Chinese wizard on an exciting adventure to the ends of the earth.
Guitry reprises his role as Pasteur which he played successfully at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1919.
Patrica is the wife of Alain de Saulieu, a handsome engineer. She unfortunately loses her husband, who is killed in action during a battle of the First World War. At least, this is only the official truth, for Alain is not dead. Patricia indeed recognizes him one day. But the inverse does not work the other way around: Alain has become amnesiac and he does not remember her. And worst of all, he lives in a conjugal relationship with Germaine, his dedicated nurse, who is now pregnant by him. What has the future in store then for the three (not to say four) of them?
