Acting
In the Camargue a local young playboy named Frédéri falls in love with a young woman from Arles. His family thinks she is unsuitable as a wife because she had a fling with a soldier. His entourage attempt to cheer him up but he intends to commit suicide.
The guardian is engaged to a girl from a good family, but the intervention of a gypsy will make his heart lean. This one comes in fact to take revenge and will try to kill him.
A young man-about-Paris, cut off from his father's money, falls in with a picaresque gang of car thieves.
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.
Middle-aged Georges of the "old school" who offers shelter and comfort to Marcelle. Despite his own reservations, Georges falls in love with the much-younger girl, remaining faithful to her even after he realizes that she cares only for his money.
A very shy person inherits a traveling circus on the express condition that he manages to present a number on the ring.
Robert and Françoise Monier make a hot air balloon to fly to the stratosphere. After a visit to Venus, they return home, but have only aged 15 days whereas 25 years have passed on Earth.
An assistant pharmacist in the South of France , Blaise works for Mrs. Pinède, a well-endowed hot-blooded woman who has developed a crush on him, and her husband ... who hasn't! One day, Blaise meets Felloux, a rich man who is convalescing in Cassis. Felloux takes a liking to Blaise and decides to offer him a perfect day in Juan-les-Pins. Gambling in the casino, Blaise wins an astronomical sum. A new life seems to open to him but not for long. Indeed he loses all, but not before he has given a beautiful necklace to a young woman.
A rural maiden's two suitors go off to war, leaving her pregnant.
Jacques de Chardin, runner of women, marries a rich and young American, Mary-Ann. He does not give up, however, his conquests and has an affair with Chouquette. His wife and her friend, Baron Sigismond, decide to fake an affair in order to get revenge.
Five unemployed workers win 100,000 Francs in the national lottery. Instead of sharing the money, they buy a ruin and build an open-air cafe. But difficulties come to split their friendly group apart.
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.
Ferdinand is an honest and almost prude chemist at the Fourageot laboratories. His boss, Mr Fourageot, is mostly busy with his mistresses but comes to be worried with his young and outgoing daughter.
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.
After finding and adopting a child, a man gets a job at an all-girls school which doesn't allow families. Once the girls find the baby, they become his forty little mothers. At the same time, the child's true mother searches for him.
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.
The gratuitous murder of his father and the misery of the people, aggravated by a succession of bad harvests, lead Gaspard, a great admirer of Mandrin and blacksmith by profession, to revolt. With his companion Samplan, he finds himself at the head of a handful of soldiers dissatisfied with their fate and a band of brigands. They steal money from the rich to give it to the poor, like highwaymen, vindicators with a big heart. In their eyes, things cannot go on like this, in this country which seems given over to the decadence of the nobility and the whims of an indolent king. Gaspard and his troupe are responsible for making it known.
CĂ©sar runs a bar along Marseilles' port, assisted by his 23-year-old son, Marius. Friends since childhood, Fanny and Marius love each other, but Marius has a secret wanderlust: every ship's whistle stirs a longing for foreign lands. When M. Panisse seeks Fanny's hand in marriage and when a departing clipper needs a deckhand, Marius and Fanny must decide who and what they love most. CĂ©sar, with his generous, wise spirit, tries to guide his son.
Mimile is a street singer and also a very inventive free rider. With his friend Georges, a musician in the same orchestra, they meet Arlette Sicleton and Lulu. Arlette is the sister of Sicleton, a sports event organizer and Lulu is the daughter of Ledoux, the supervisor in charge of tracking down free riders. After many misunderstandings, love will triumph.
