Three stories about the 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 Mme Tellier taking her girls (whores) to the country for attending her niece's communion - pleasure and purity. And lastly, Jean the painter falling in love with his model - pleasure and death.
It all happens in a hospital waiting room. While his young wife has just had a serious accident and is undergoing surgery, the husband relives, in his memory, the reality of their near past, or what he would have liked his marital union to be. At the outset, this young couple took as their model the famous couple from "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" and their line of conduct: complete freedom for everyone, as long as they confide in each other about their adventures.
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.
An adaptation of Émile Zola’s 1877 masterpiece L’assommoir, the film is an uncompromising depiction of a lowly laundress’s struggles to deal with an alcoholic husband while running her own business.
Nicole tries to seduce a young man who lead a bohemian life in an untidy flat with his three pals.
A violinist passes on to his daughter three rings which represent three passions of his romantic past, and urges her to save each for men who truly deserve one.She squanders them all on one man who is undeserving.
Jean and Claude - he a car builder, she a model - loved each other, then separated because of Jean's despotic affections. Claude has retired with her child and a friend to a farm she can't manage. Wearily, the friend alerts Jean who, in the twinkling of an eye, erases the difficulties. Claude also learns that the child has been recognized and that his father has always looked after him. The two reconcile and embark on a journey for better or for worse.
Returning from South America, a singer is hired by an old pal who runs a detective agency to use a perch as a night club performer to be an investigator.The amateur sleuth then falls for a girl whose brother is a jewel thief.
Au Royaume des Cieux takes place in in a dreadful girls' reformatory. A couple of lovers will try to escape from this living hell.
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.
Victor Boniface's life is not exactly a rest cure. Just imagine: Victor is both a store detective and a ... shoplifter (only when he walks in his sleep, mind you)! And falling in love while sleepwalking is no bed of roses either, as the good-natured man simply forgets everything after waking up. Fortunately love wins the game in the end. Does that mean that life will become as easy as pie ? Certainly not: the little Bonifaces will be sleepwalkers just like their daddy!
A daydreaming French composer sees himself as a fine figure dashing through history.
After a planned robbery on an armoured car the investigating police officer encounters a female journalist who specialises in criminology, and who he suspects may have had a role in the heist.
Paul is an accomplished teacher at Janson-de-Sailly. A "good guy" who, having returned for the holidays to the provincial town where he was raised, finds Véronique, his childhood friend. He falls madly in love...
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.
A policeman receives a fabulous inheritance. Thanks to this, he conquers the heart of Queen Marika. But crooks deprive him of his financial means
Paul, a friendly Parisian cab driver, has two loves: music and his fiancée Virginie. After graduating from the Conservatoire with a first prize, he lives on hope, offering his classical works to publishers. One day, while driving customers to the races, he plays a "toquard": Maubeuge, who wins. With his friends, he celebrates the event and, for dessert, composes a song for the occasion: "Tout ça ne vaut pas un clair de lune à Maubeuge". Monique, a secretary at the radio station and one of the guests, had a record made of the tape recording. And this record, following a mistake, was broadcast on a religious music program. It's a runaway success: for Paul, it's fame and fortune. which he had obviously coveted, but more with his symphonies, opera and sonatas. No matter, the "Clair de lune à Maubeuge" (Moonlight in Maubeuge) allows two happily engaged couples to become happily married.
The writer Pierre Carot became rich and famous with his book "Life as a Couple", which was based on the loving relationships of four couples. Now he's setting up his will and wants to leave his wealth to the couples among the four, which are still as deeply in love - if any: else, his companions get the money. He sends them out to visit the couples and test their love.
Young and handsome Armand Duval falls in love with Marguerite Gautier, a 'demi-mondaine'. He manages to persuade her to give up her life as a courtesan and they both settle down in the country. Tthe beginning of their idyll is like a dream but a short-lived one as their relationship is considered scandalous by Armand's family. During a secret visit to Marguerite, Armand's father convinces her to leave his son, which she does broken-heartedly but out of love for Armand. Her end will be doubly tragic; not only does she suffer from terminal tuberculosis but she is abandoned by everyone, including by Armand, who believes she has betrayed her. At long last, learning the truth, Armand rushes to her bedside and Marguerite has the joy to breathe her last in his arms.
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.
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...
The gifts and bequests department is particularly eccentric, including Lahrier, a fervent absentee and songwriter in his spare time.
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...
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.
Léo 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.
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.
Muichkine, a young Russian prince, returns home to St. Petersburg from a mental institution, determined to spread decency and kindness in the harsh and cruel world. He becomes betrothed to an innocent young girl while trying to save a less-innocent woman from her own travail, but jealousy and his own naivete conjoin to bring about unimaginable tragedy.
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.
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.
Commissioner Malaise investigates a strange crime: a mannequin, stolen from the window of a tailor, is found stabbed... But his face of wax has the features of a certain Gilbert, who died a year earlier in a family, all of whose members will become more or less suspicious to the Commissioner. He thinks that, in spite of Dr. Furnelle's conclusions, Gilbert's death was not natural. But finding the cause of death and the identity of the possible culprit will require more than a mere intuition.
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.
Married French lawyer Andre defends succesfully the case of Yvette, who committed a robbery. He falls in love with her, but she isn't true to him.
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.
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...