Alberic
An ornithologist mistaken for an explosives expert is sent alone into a small French town during WWI to investigate a garbled report from the resistance about a bomb which the departing Germans have set to blow up a weapons cache.
Un Moine
Historical film directed and written by Sacha Guitry follows the the history of Paris from its founding through the significant events in the city's history.
(uncredited)
Mr Lucas, a grocer, wants to attract the clientele; he imagines a lottery; every week, you can win a bike. It's a big success.
Saul De Tarse is a Roman soldier who is making rough all over. He arrives at the Golgotha when the apostles remove the cross. He ruthlessly persecutes the Christians, even though they are his own friends.
Le vieux monsieur qui critique toutes les époques
A daydreaming French composer sees himself as a fine figure dashing through history.
Monsieur Torcheboeuf (segment "Coralie")
The short stories of Guy de Maupassant enjoyed a renaissance in the early 1950s, thanks in great part to the Max Ophuls production Le Plaisir. In Trois Femmes, three De Maupassant stories are dramatized, each conveying the central theme of women falling in love. In the first, a black female carnival entertainer causes an uproar when she falls in love with a white soldier. In the second, a young bride is pressured into having a baby to collect a huge inheritance. And in the final episode, a pregnant girl is "adopted" and protected by a small circle of friends. In standard De Maupassant fashion, each of the three stories in Trois Femmes is capped by a surprise twist.
The director of 'Nuptia'
Noël is a bachelor who inherits a matrimonial agency. After contemplating selling it, he chooses to manage it.
Monsieur Paul
Back from the war, Marceau Le Guern remembers. Educated in an orphanage run by Dominican brothers, he fell into misery when he left it. His only asset was his good looks, which did not escape the attention of Madame Alice, a shady woman who persuaded him to pose for pornographic photos meant for lonely aging women. Marceau also served as a gigolo before the war and captivity put an end to this juicy business. Now he wants to start a new life, all the more as ha has found love in the person of a pure young lady named Dominique. But Madame Alice won't hear of it...
Violette
A Dakota plane is carrying a ton of gold bound for Brazzaville, but it is hijacked over the Camargue. On arrival, we find nails instead of gold!
Anselme Bourguignon
The romantic life of the head of a bandit gang, wanted by the police. Cartouche gets away with being deported to Louisiana after unmasking a plot by a Duke against the throne.
André de Kerdec, a young lawyer buys an old parchment in an antique shop and discovers that a treasure is hidden in the bedroom of Artémise, an old maid who owns a manor. He manages to be hired as her chauffeur by Artémise and sets about looking for the treasure. During this time, he falls in love with Lucie, the old spinster's niece. But the trouble is that Artémise develops a crush on André...!
Mr. Paulau, a board member
The accountant of an insurance company, rather eccentric and quick to push the song, is responsible for monitoring the actions of an alluring South American whose suicide would mean the collapse of the company. Finally, the accountant discovers an attempted insurance scam and marries the surly and charming interpreter who was the liaison between the South American and himself.
Destrouesse
Anne seeks revenge on Jacques who betrayed her trust. She decides to poison him and the people close to him.
Le juge d'instruction
In 1825, Paul-Louis Courier, a Republican writer known for publishing pamphlets against the French monarchy, was killed in the farm where he had retired. Was it a political assassination or a vicious crime? Those who have known him loved him or hated him are interrogated by the police. Will the guilty person(s) be ferreted out?
Dermont
A chronicler gets himself hired as a gamekeeper in Monsieur De Saint-Ricquier's mansion where he lives with his stepdaughter, Henriette, everybody considers insane .
le portier
Stanislas Oscar Seminario, aka SOS, is a young explorer, just back from Africa, visiting old friends: the Pescara's. But the father keeps receiving anonymous letters. And soon a mysterious murder is committed. SOS begins to investigate...
Monsieur Marin
In France during World War I, Marthe waits for her husband, Jacques, while he fights on the front lines. Marthe then begins a tempestuous affair with 17-year-old François, with whom she had a dalliance before marrying Jacques. Jealous François struggles with the fact that Marthe is married, while she tries to prove her devotion to her young, hotheaded lover. Things become even more complex when Marthe becomes pregnant with Jacques' baby.
Jean is a good man who has a steady job (he is a mechanic in the village garage) and a companion named Aline. But Jean is also a guzzler and a philanderer. As a result, when a local prostitute is killed in the surroundings, he becomes at once the victim of rumor...
L'aubergiste (uncredited)
The Marquis de Montauran was appointed to command the Chouans whose first two revolts were crushed. An aristocrat, Marie-Nathalie de Verneuil, is sent by Joseph Fouché to seduce and capture him.
Boëhmer
The adventurer Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, descendant (by the left hand) of the king of France Henri II, and who claims to be "Countess de la Motte", imagines a tortuous plan to steal a magnificent diamond necklace that the queen Marie-Antoinette refused to buy from the jewelers Boehmer and Bassange.
Sidobre
Jérôme owns a boat with his crook of an uncle, La Rose de la Mer. They sail with a band of crooks hired by the uncle to scuttle the ship and collect the insurance premium.
Petithunier
The novelist Suzanne Delmont creates a character, "The Uncatcable Frédéric", a sort of Arsène Lupin. A mysterious stranger launches a press campaign accusing him of having a harmful influence on young people...
A student, Gabriel, comes to the aid of Gisèle, a young manicurist wrongfully arrested, by helping her escape. As a result, Gabriel must serve three months in prison. His sentence served, unable to continue his studies, he collaborates with a gang of crooks. Gisèle, in turn, will save him from this bad situation by taking him away from his overeager associates.
Anne-Marie meets three men bearing the first name of Ludovic. Each of them has a very different character than the other two. The young woman will find great love with one of them.
In Marseilles, the fisherman Tonin closely monitors the actions of the wreckage workers led by a certain Mr. Léon. Could these bizarre individuals have something to do with the double murder at the Grand Hotel?
Dietrich
June 1944, a French town towards the end of the occupation. Following several attacks perpetrated by the resistance, the inhabitants who listen to English radio are rounded up by the Germans in a prison and considered as hostages. In one of the cells are found men from all walks of life: an aristocrat, the Viscount of Saint-Leu, Doctor Noblet, a resistance fighter, Béquille the wanderer with a wooden leg, and a strange character nicknamed "Black Market". The latter arouses mistrust among the prisoners, because it could well have been introduced by the enemy.
During the stagecoach trip of a frightened group of inhabitants of Rouen, Elisabeth Rousset, known as "Boule de Suif", renders these people a signal service, but comes up against their stupidity and their sufficiency. A little later, Boule de Suif assassinates the formidable Prussian lieutenant whom his friends had nicknamed Fifi and who shamelessly displayed his taste for pillage and his sadistic tendencies.
Payen-Laurel
Nicole tries to seduce a young man who lead a bohemian life in an untidy flat with his three pals.
A famous writer takes in a young amnesiac who, thanks to his care, remembers having tried to kill her unfaithful lover. He will know how to console her and share with her a new happiness.
Sylvie, a girl who believes she is cursed having seen her two lovers die in tragic circumstances, lives in the town of Carcassonne, in the South of France with her adoptive guardian, Mr. Toulzac. This one, a retired school teacher, has a passion: to discover the secret of the Cathars, a Christian sect of the Middle Ages that glorified death over life. One day Sylvie meets Roland, a pianist and composer back home in Carcassonne. A handsome and good man, he instills new hope into Sylvie's troubled mind. Unfortunately her uncle asks her then to renounce the world and to follow him down into a secret cathedral he has just found...
Monsieur Borel
Monsieur Benoit's existence is transformed when his dour wife suddenly thinks in a bout of folly that she will become a chanteuse and her husband the impresario.
'Le baron'
A rich young man, Pierre Trévoux, has a desire for adventure and boasts of his courage. While he is staying with friends in the countryside, his hosts, to play a trick on him, organize a fake burglary, but he discovers the hoax. When he returns home, he finds his house broken into. Convinced that the game continues, he does not understand that he is dealing with real gangsters. His recklessness allows him to rout the criminals.
A young woman has doubts about her husband's fidelity. She pretends a trip, but settles in a hotel where her husband must pass. He meets her and, disturbed by the one he believes to be his wife's double, becomes her lover. Little by little the truth breaks through. The husband takes leave of the mistress and returns to the wife whose return has been announced.
Le juge d'instruction
Bastien and Furet are a journalist and a photographer working together as a team on the newspaper 'L'Echo du Jour'. Just as they are about to go off on a weekend break with Micky, their boss's secretary, they are sent to a crime scene to report the murder of a Russian named 'le Moujik'.
Le receveur de P.T.T.
Remy Germain is a doctor in a French town who becomes the focus of a vicious smear campaign, as letters accusing him of having an affair and performing unlawful abortions are mailed to village leaders. The mysterious writer, who signs each letter as "Le Corbeau" (The Raven) soon targets the whole town, exposing everyone's dark secrets. This allegorical film was highly controversial at the time of its release, and was banned in France after the Liberation.
Chabrol, publisher
A person who had usurped the identity of a famous writer of detective stories was killed in the train. Why and by whom?
Le petit homme
A struggling artist buys a talisman that gives him love, fame and wealth. The talisman is a severed left hand, and it works perfectly, in fact, magically. But of course there is nothing free in this world, and after one year the devil comes and asks for his due.
Le docteur Pierre
Picpus is a street and a subway stop where a number of murders have been committed. Maigret tries to find the killer.
Le gouverneur (uncredited)
Edmond Dantes is falsely accused by those jealous of his good fortune, and is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the notorious island prison, Chateau d'If. While imprisoned, he meets the Abbe Faria, a fellow prisoner whom everyone believes to be mad. The Abbe tells Edmond of a fantastic treasure hidden away on a tiny island, that only he knows the location of. After many years in prison, the old Abbe dies, and Edmond escapes disguised as the dead body. Now free, Edmond must find the treasure the Abbe told him of, so he can use the new-found wealth to exact revenge on those who have wronged him.
The Paladines write crime novels together. In a cinema, they happen to see a report on the consequences of a shipwreck in which Lieutenant Dupuis tells about the death of an old man in the lifeboat carrying the survivors. Husband and wife agree that this could be the starting point of a new story and go and see Dupuis to get more details about the drama. When they come to his hotel Dupuis is dead with a bullet in his head. Police characterizes the death as suicide but Paladine has found a train ticket in the dead man's pocket. With his wife he takes the train to the specified destination, somewhere in the provinces...
Morillon, the photographer (uncredited)
A scatterbrained girl harasses a lawyer in Cannes.
Beaulieu
Cambo, a banker, has been in trouble since a certain Parizot has tried to extort stocks from him. Following the advice of his friend Quincampoix, Cambo decides to trade places with Bardac, a painter, who happens to be his lookalike. Bardac slips into Cambo's shoes with delight although he does not really live up to his task. But Cambo, who manages to ruin Parizot, makes a 100% profit on the situation. There are of course some misunderstandings when one man is mistaken for the other, notably as concerns Lulu and Geneviève, respectively Bardac's and Cambo's sweethearts, but things finally return to their initial state.
Unbeknownst to the members of a French family, a radio announcer makes them the subject of a broadcast.
A fairground boss is ruined. He steals his aunt's jewelry, but being chased he gives the jewelry to a couple of dancers. They are mistaken for the Morton Sisters and perform in the Folies Parisiennes with the jewels, with enormous success.
L'adjudant
Prosper, the accountant of a fashion house, takes a vacation to Monte Carlo without his wife Sabine. And if he goes alone it is for a very good reason: he has a rendezvous with Olga, a beautiful woman. Once in Monte Carlo, he wins a large sum of money at the casino. Unfortunately for him he immediately becomes the prey of three gangsters who proceed to relieve him of his newly acquired fortune.
Defoy
Based on true facts, a news item which was widely talked about in the nineteenth century, this is the story of a wife who might have poisoned her husband .
Story of the Siberian monk Gregory Rasputin and the hold he exerted over the court of the last Russian czar, Nicholas.
Count Hubert de Latour Latour is the lover of the Duchess de Maulévrier. The day he is surprised by the Duke in the company of his wife and... in a rather compromising situation, Hubert resorts to a subterfuge, claiming that he has come to see the Duchess to seek support to be elected at the Institut de France, whose chairman is precisely her husband. The latter takes him at his word and Hubert becomes... a member of the French Academy! Which just shows that everything leads to everything.
Russia, 1835. Lieutenant Hermann, a compulsive gambler, is fascinated by an infallible martingale held by Countess Tomski, nicknamed The Queen of Spades. The day Hermann wants to wring the secret from her, the countess dies of fear. Following this tragic scene, Hermann sinks into dementia. Luckily, Lisa, his frail lover, brings him back to life and happiness.
Mr. Pontbichot has long dreamed of cheating on his wife. To achieve his goals, he looks for a son-in-law who could help him, and finds him in the person of a young painter, who pleases his daughter.
Parainneaux
An aristocratic family wants to marry off their young Helene. The mother and grandmother each pick not so bright prospects.Helene herself is drawn to an elderly baron.But what about Robert, the family secretary?
A young unemployed girl pretends to be a boy and gets a job as a car washer.
Jules Bongrand
The very chic Parisian couturier Jean Granet has trouble with the police, and will find himself imprisoned for two weeks, in the provinces, for speeding. He manages to get himself replaced by his friend Lambelin who, for a fee, will serve the sentence in his place. This is the beginning of a series of misunderstandings.
A few colorful characters, with very different social origins and whose destinies are not always glorious, will parade before our eyes, for our greatest pleasure. Turning among characters such as : an alcoholic bum, a rich banker, an eccentric old lady, a working class girl, a poor lover, and a hypocritical bourgeois.
Two unemployed musicians dress up as women to be hired by an all -female orchestra "Tulips from Holland"; they fall in love with two gorgeous musicians.
Monsieur Corbin
A young supervisor is expelled from his high school after misleading his students during an outing. He made his fortune and basked on the Côte d'Azur. A young maid comes to his aid before he loses everything. She reveals to him that she is in fact a successful novelist.
Well-to-do Simone replaces her music-hall friend Yahne when her wealthy uncle visits from America.
Playwright Jacques Deval directed this 1935 adaptation of his own stage comedy Tovaritch. Set in Paris, the story revolves around Princess Tatiana (Irene de Zilaby) and General Mikail (Andre Lefaur), two members of the Russian nobility who'd been forced to relocate to France after the Revolution. Though the regal couple has been entrusted with the Imperial crown jewels, they'd sooner starve to death than betray the late Czar by selling the gems. As a result, they're reduced to taking jobs as servants in the home of a wealthy but somewhat zany family. Robert E. Sherwood's Americanized version of Deval's Tovaritch was filmed by Warner Bros. in 1937, with Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer.
A record seller, and not very serious, Henry spends his nights in a cabaret where there is a Slavic prince in exile. His resemblance to the Prince of Palestria makes him designated to replace the young man who prefers to stay in Paris. And Henry takes with him the one he loves.
Archibald Torrington
An intelligent young worker, enterprising but boastful, repeats to all the winds that, if he were the boss, we would see what we would see. One of the main shareholders of the factory takes him at his word for twenty-four hours.
A former typist at a bank ,having married her elegant young boss and gone on a honeymoon, needs to return to work when the bank runs into trouble, and is separated for a while from her new husband.
Sophie is the daughter of the concierge of a large building. One day, her father surprises her tenderly embraced by the viscount who is going to see his fiancee on the fifth floor. The concierge demands compensation but Sophie's fiance reclaims his beloved with authority.
An obscure mechanic falls in love with a an champion pilot.
Dr. Parpalaid
"Everybody is ill: you just don't know it yet". Knock, a newly arrived physician takes over a small town through fear and authority. NB : this is a different movie from the 1951 version where Louis Jouvet also plays Dr Knock.
A young man who loves his wife wants rid of his troublesome mistress. He dresses up as a wealthy Brazilian and seduces her in a jiffy. He hopes to reach a settlement, that she must sign. In this settlement she will promise to break with her lover. He can then show that he is a faithful husband.
Monsieur Albert is a very elegant and much-appreciated butler. One day he falls in love with a client, Sylvia Robertson, and follows her to a winter sports resort. Sylvia does not recognize him and imagines that he is related to a king who goes incognito.
le bijoutier