Jean Gerardy

Aging opera singer Joachim Dallayrac retires from the stage and retreats to the countryside to school two young singers. Although the rigorous training takes its toll on both teacher and students, there is plenty of time for relationships to develop between the three.

A Belgian village is struck by repeated flooding, all this because they lack a new sewer. But the Ministry delays in providing the funding needed to build it. To alert public opinion, the villagers decide to do something. This "something" will be a play describing the life of their saint patron. Trouble follows, partly fueled by the short-tempered mayor.

Two journalists drop by the Waterloo studios, where a director shows them a rough cut of a pacifist film. In it, a botched atomic test in Belgium creates a clay cloud that spreads world peace, causing stock markets to crash and weapons manufacturers to lose their jobs.The journalists roast the movie for being unrealistic, but the director defends it as a wake-up call to maintain peace. Afterward, they tour the studios, giving a cool look behind the scenes.

Pouske runs the "Le Bienvenu" café with his wife Antoinette and daughter Jeanne. On the market square, the fairgrounds are setting up their rides and the neighborhood is getting ready to party. But Jeanne is about to fall in love with a sweetheart who has come from who knows where to cause trouble.

Having lost his physician's license, Dr. Louis Krantz joins a gang of hoods to treat their wounded. When his son falls ill and needs expensive medical help, Louis decides to participate in a hold-up with the gang. Unfortunately for them, the robbery goes wrong. The gang boss, persuaded that Louis has betrayed them, decides to gun him down.

Set in an imaginary country where the trombone orchestra is the heart of power and photographs have a natural size that limits the number of trombone players that can appear on their official picture.