Acting
Véronique Lanier runs one of the most highly rated haute couture houses in Paris. Her first partner is her husband Pierre, who has left aside a promising artist career to design the styles which make their firm a success. The trouble is that Véronique lives only for her job and does not allow herself -and her husband for that matter - a moment's respite. In Cannes, Pierre meets Wanda, a young singer with strange, fascinating eyes. The frustrated husband falls for her but gradually realizes that the light mercurial creature cannot possibly fulfill him. Véronique, feeling miserable, understands she is on the wrong track. She promises Pierre that she will make efforts to reconcile work and married life. Véronique and Pierre will live and work together again, each one forgiving the other for their faults.
Frédéric Lansac, an artist and botanist, has a wild affair with party girl Moira, but throws her over when he meets the lovely Anne. Frédéric and Anne marry, but tragedy strikes when Moira shows up at the wedding party and makes a scene, causing Anne to fall into a bonfire. Frédéric and Anne lock themselves up in his mansion with his servants, a pair of mute dwarves. Anne, needless to say, becomes bitter and demanding. Frédéric tells everyone Anne has died, then on the sly, hires a nurse to look after her.
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...
Baron Yves de Kerfunte learns of his uncle's death. Overjoyed, he is astonished to discover that seven other individuals are vying for the inheritance. Worse still, when they open the will, they learn that only the elderly Louise de Kerfunte is the heiress, and that she intends to squander the money quickly.
A beautiful and sophisticated teenager is placed in a regimented French girls' boarding school after her father apparently commits suicide over a business scandal. She immediately gains admirers -- a lustful middle-aged artist, a handsome young composer, a fellow female student -- as well as a jealous rival. With the help of her schoolmates, she attempts to elope with the composer, but the adults catch on to the plot, and she is locked into her room at night.
Carolyn de Sayn was married at the age of sixteen, against her will, to the Prince of Wittgenstein, much older than herself. A few years later, she met Franz Liszt, whose fame had already conquered the whole of Europe. Taking advantage of her husband's absence, the young woman invites the musician to her estate in Woronince. When Franz confesses his love for her, she finds it easier to fight her own feelings.
Promoted to wrestling champion by chance, Tonin, known as le Bourreau de l'Ardèche, moves to Paris. He is quickly snapped up by Monsieur Bob, a self-styled manager who, in reality, hides his dealings under the cover of a nightclub, but who is also Tonin's regimental buddy. So Tonin acts as a front man, while Bob provides him with fake victories. The beautiful Wanda, the gangster's mistress, appeals to Tonin; she's charitable and sets him on the right path. He returns to the Ardèche and marries the daughter of the village mayor, after learning what a dangerous protector Bob is.
Determined to assert his paternal rights, Quentin leaves his small village on the Swiss border to go to Lyon to look for his daughter, now a hairdresser, who, busy with her work, hasn't been back to the village for two years. In a few days, it will be Denise's birthday, the youngest of his daughters, and, urged on by his wife, he sets off, determined to bring the prodigal son back to the family celebration. But Denise is now living off her charms.
A remake and rewriting by director Bernard Borderie and scripters of a well-made 1932 film, this routine French drama seems a little outdated. The story has changed from a Russian officer who returns home from the war to find his wife has remarried, to a former paratrooper who tries to drive a stolen truck back from Morocco and suffers an accident -- and the same fate as the Russian. As a result of his injuries and the subsequent delay, the ex-military man is unable to get home as scheduled, and the woman he loves decides that he has left her. Once she "realizes" that supposed truth, she decides to marry her boss. As in the earlier film, one of the protagonists ends up in the French Foreign Legion and all three head toward a fateful meeting in a North African desert.
Inspector Bart is assigned to investigate the disappearance of Many, a young fashion designer with whom he broke up some time ago. But had he really broken up? Because the night before the crime, we see him leaving her house. And that same night, she is found murdered. It's a difficult investigation.
