Acting
Leaping forward twenty years, the trilogy continues with the death of Fanny's husband, Panisse, and the discovery of her secret by her son, CĂ©sariot. The young man resolves to track down his biological father, Marius, whose life has been fraught with calamity and poverty.
A pompous grocer’s assistant in Marseille annoys a visiting film crew so much that they prank him with a phony acting contract; believing it to be real, the “schpountz” heads to Paris for his new career.
Soon after Marius's departure, Fanny learns that she is pregnant with his child, to the disappointment of her mother and of Marius's father, César. To secure a better life for her unborn child, she accepts a marriage proposal from the aging widower Honoré Panisse.
Outwardly, Monsieur Victor would appear to be the model citizen. A respectable Toulon shopkeeper, he has a devoted wife and is courteous and considerate to all who know him. However, beneath this veneer of respectability hides a notorious receiver of stolen goods, who trades with hardened criminals. Victor manages to keep up his double life without any difficulty until the fateful day when one of his partners in crime threatens to expose him. Fearing a scandal, Victor kills the crook in a moment of panic, using a shoemaker's tool. Naturally, the murder is blamed on a local shoemaker, who is sentenced to ten years' hard labour. Seven years later, the former shoemaker reappears in Toulon, having escaped from prison. The first person to recognise him is Monsieur Victor...
In this little Provencal village, a new baker, Aimable, settles down. His wife Aurelie is beautiful and much younger than he. She departs with a shepherd the night after Aimable produces his first breads. Aimable is so afflicted that he can not work anymore. Therefore, the villagers, who initially laughed at his cuckoldry, take the matter very seriously (they want the bread) and organize a plan to find Aurelie and to bring her back to the bakery.
In the 30s, a small village in the Provence is losing its inhabitants because young people prefer to go to the city to find easy jobs and escape from being farmers living in relative poverty. Only a few old people and the poacher Panturle remain. Panturle dreams of bringing the village back to life, finding a wife, founding a family and work as a farmer. One day, the village is visited by a traveling knife-grinder, Urbain Gedemus and a young woman, Arsule. Gedemus treats Arsule like a slave, but Arsule accept this because she has nowhere to go and -we guess- her 'work' with Gedemus is the last thing that saves her from being a prostitute. When she meets Panturle and knows about his dreams, she escapes from Gedemus and decides to stay with him. Together, they start a new life, made of hard farming work but mostly of happiness to have each other, fulfilling the earlier dreams of Panturle. Can anything break the happiness of their new life?
Once their military service is over, the instrumentalists of a regimental orchestra find themselves in civilian life and decide to run a hotel themselves on the CĂ´te d'Azur.
Two tourists in Provence meet an old naive peasant painter who tells them the extraordinary story that happened in the village in 1890: Amédée, the teacher, succeeded in stealing.
Philippe Marcillac grew up in Sète, where he specialized in pranks of dubious taste. One day, as a teenager, he organizes a party in an abandoned villa. Philipe finds himself alone with Marie-Titite, who advises him to restart his life on a more serious footing.
A doctor, leading an agreed life of the provincial petty bourgeoisie, falls in love with a young woman. As their relationship deepens, he becomes violently jealous and blames her for her dating and friendships.
At Christmastime, the love affairs of five clothing models working for Pierre Roussel, a renowned Paris fashion designer. Marlène hesitates between two suitors. Blanche, who loves Jean, Roussel's son, wants him to talk to his father about their relationship. Catherine learns that her lover has a wife and two kids. Jeannette throws herself into the arms of an Oriental prince. In despair the fifth one attempts to commit suicide...
Desiring to give his compatriots a taste for laughter, a comic Marseilles founds a club with friends whose joke is the reason for living and tries to breathe new life into the sleeping city.
Jofroi sells his orchard to Alphonse. Alphonse wants to use the land for crops, so he starts to cut down the trees. Jofroi is furious: how can someone cut down those trees? He threatens to commit suicide so that the small town will blame Alphonse and Alphonse’s life will be miserable. Alphonse, the curate, the teacher, and some of the townsfolk spend the rest of the movie trying to keep Jofroi from committing suicide…
An off-beat, uneven tale about a man intent on suicide and the three people who try to talk him out of it, Pantalaskas stars American Carl Studer in the title role of the morose, would-be suicide. Set in Paris and taking place over an entire night, the story has a complication in that the trio who want to prevent the suicide do not speak the man's language -- he is Lithuanian and speaks no French. So the protagonists comb the underbelly of a nighttime Paris, looking high and low but mostly low for anyone who speaks Lithuanian. Depending mainly on dialogue for its impact, the verbose drama reveals how the protagonists undergo a transformation as the night wears on.
