Doctor
Jacques Montet, a successful crime story writer, has already written a hundred books and would like to call it quits now to devote himself to loftier writing. But his wife, a cold-hearted, money-minded, bossy woman won't allow. All the more as she is the one who supplies Jacques with the plots of his detective stories. When Jacques, yearning for true love, meets young, pretty Muriel, he can't stand the situation any longer. Fortunately - for him - the plot of the 101st detective story imagined by his wife is about a ... perfect crime. He simply has to follow her instructions to ... get rid of her. Everything goes according to plan until Jacques discovers a scary detail: the presence of a mysterious witness on the scene of the crime.
The practice of Dr. Julien, a GP of Marseilles, consists mainly of drug-addicts. One day, one of his patient dies at his surgery and Julien yields to the temptation : he steals the dead man's money and hides the corpse in a trunk. But the whole thing is discovered and ... misinterpreted. The doctor is condemned for killing the junkie and sent to the Cayenne convict prison, from which he escapes. The Indians give him shelter and he is soon given the opportunity to return their good deed when a yellow fever epidemic strikes their tribe. A young woman helps to fight the disease and, thanks to her, Julien starts considering that a new life is possible for him.
Théodore
The tumultuous loves of a diver and a pretty bitch. Mario loves Perrucha, she only loves money. When, by dint of diving, the boy's health deteriorates, the girl goes to find an important industrialist. Such a story can only end badly and Mario strangles Perrucha.
A son of a family in debt decides to put an end to his life and calls on a professional killer to do so, who promises to kill him within forty-eight hours. However the next day, money, luck and love smile at her again. Then can begin an infernal hide-and-seek between the assassin and his victim.
Félix
Franz Schubert retired from Vienna in country for musical writing. He draws his inspiration from a romance with the watermiller's daughter. An operetta in the fifties Vienna style. This is the only movie from Marcel Pagnol in color and the only movie in rouxcolor, a French experimental process derivated from the agfacolor German process.
After the exodus, a woman with a tidy life decides to take in the abandoned children; she meets a singer who knows how to make her see life with more poetry.
Thérèse kills her lover during the very night of her wedding to the count of Vétheul. To gain a night with her, a modest local worker agrees to bury the body.
L'assistant
Gino Fabretti is a famous Italian tenor. During a tour in Nice, he begins a relationship with the wife of a renowned doctor. The doctor traps and drugs him and replaces his vocal cords with those of Robert, a delivery boy in a grocery store. Robert wakes up with the voice of Gino and Gino with that of Robert (including accents and mannerisms!). The unfaithful wife despises the tenor without his voice and becomes more interested in the grocer.
Marco
Proud, eccentric, and antisocial, Monsieur Hire has always kept to himself. But after a woman turns up dead in the Paris suburb where he lives, he feels drawn to a pretty young newcomer to town and discovers that his neighbors are only too ready to suspect the worst of him.
