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.
Gervaise Macquart is a beautiful Parisian laundress and mother whose lover, Lantier, walks out on her. She eventually marries Henri Coupeau, a roofer who has an unfortunate accident. As her now crippled husband descends into alcoholism, Gervaise tries to make ends meet on her own. Life becomes even more complicated when Lantier returns and befriends Henri. Meanwhile, the man she really loves is sent to prison.
A daydreaming French composer sees himself as a fine figure dashing through history.
Naturally optimistic and mischievous, Jérôme Aubin crossed the time of his adolescence, around 1945, with ease and good humor. The years passed. He married the pretty Françoise, a little neighbor he had known since the age of eight, and soon found himself a secondary school teacher, a little anxious at the thought of facing for the first time students he had been told were particularly turbulent. How will he master this new difficulty? Better than you'd think, thanks to a delicious optimism: boldly going against the grain of conventional methods, he surprises his young audience, thwarting the plans of the dissipated gossips and turning their most tendentious attitudes to his advantage. All this provokes astonishment and concern among the college's leaders. But Jérôme Aubin is no pushover, and even the dreaded general supervisor finds himself obliged to give in to his most audacious initiatives...
In this sketch comedy compared to the American film Hellzapoppin, a spectacle is put on to celebrate the wedding of a nobleman, but the results are disastrous.
American ex-Air Force man and current businessman Bob Macklin is married to the impoverished Italian-born Lisa. Bob’s jealousy and immaturity irks Lisa, who tells him she’s planning to file for a divorce before his plane departs on a business trip for Casablanca.
Nicole tries to seduce a young man who lead a bohemian life in an untidy flat with his three pals.
Superintendent Maigret is sent to Antibes to elucidate the murder of William Brown, a rich Australian who regularly disappeared to indulge in formidable drinking binges. In his footsteps, Maigret makes the rounds of bars until discovering the Liberty Bar, its welcoming patroness La Grosse Jaja and its equivocal clientele. It is without a doubt here that the key to the murder is to be found.
Victor Le Garrec, a former boxer, runs a gym in Paris while dreaming of finding an aspiring champion who will reach the goals he was never able to achieve.
Paris is a city where effervescence is dangerous for city dwellers, who have become nothing more than "nervous machines". Two eminent psychiatrists, one French and one American, decided to administer a sedative to all Parisians, proceeding by arrondissement, which they injected in single, double or triple doses. Soon, the whole of Paris was injected. Calm, good humor and kindness returned, but 11 refused to be treated and remained the only Parisian not to have been treated.
Leading lawyer Andre Gobillot takes the case of Yvette, a young criminal. As he works on her defence, an unexpected romance blooms between them, only to be cut short by a tragedy.
LĂ©o and Claude, two penniless friends turned con artists, answer matrimonial classified ads to trap women. But one of the friends soon finds his own game turned against him.
Lola, the wife of arms dealer Pedro Wassewich, is attracted to Ludovic, a young painter who turns out to be the emissary of a notorious gangster. He claims to have been sent by the latter to pick up a shipment. In fact, it's the police who, behind the scenes, orchestrate the operation to catch Wassewich red-handed.
The old Valmorin died 200 years ago. The notary tells the family about the inheritance: the one who is terminally ill will receive the money. They all try their luck with getting ill before the other so one family member pretends to be deaf, another pretends to have a terrible back ache and so on...
Les amours de Paris focuses on three disparate couples and their problems in the arena of romantic love. One couple is comprised of a faithful husband and a sick wife whose stay in the hospital is not so bad because she has taken a sudden interest in her doctor. In the second pairing, a womanizer comes to see that the model who is in love with him is worth more than yet another conquest. And to complete the trio, two zany people finally realize they are a couple.
Charming and innocent, Candide is vigorously chased away by the Baron, for his close encounters with the pretty Cunégonde. World War II breaks out, and when he is drafted and taken prisoner, he is forced to take German nationality and ends up guarding the camp where he was imprisoned. He crossed into Switzerland, but as he had no bank account, he was incarcerated for eight days for trespassing. Hunted by the Gestapo, he kills two men to free Cunégonde, who has finally been found. They both flee to Argentina, and their world tour begins. In Paris, Moscow, New York, Borneo and Alexandria. They try to follow Dr. Pangloss' optimistic rule of life. Tossed about, separated, they find themselves grown old and wiser, thinking only of cultivating their garden on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Two scientists have invented a kindness serum which can turn the fiercest human being into the sweetest kindest person. Testing the product on a wild lion proves successful. The "vaccination " becomes compulsory in the whole France, then in Europa. Mrs Durand ,who was a sour-tempered shrew, becomes tender and pampers her husband, happy as he has never been. The bossy colonel of the fourth floor surrounds his neighbors with attentions .But new problems appear, caused by this universal goodness:for instance, Mr Durand's boss's lover does not want to tell him she does not love him anymore for fear he may be grieved.Besides, a country in which people were not inoculated against nastiness becomes aggressive.
The gifts and bequests department is particularly eccentric, including Lahrier, a fervent absentee and songwriter in his spare time.
Danielle Darrieux stars in this French thriller as a singer having an affair with her accompanist. When her husband dies in an automobile accident, the two lovers suspect each other of having murdered him. Soon after, they receive 45 rpm records with the dead man’s voice, threatening to come back.
Au Royaume des Cieux takes place in in a dreadful girls' reformatory. A couple of lovers will try to escape from this living hell.
