En un día por lo demás normal, Étienne, un hombre felizmente casado y un buen padre, ve algo que lo detiene en seco: una hermosa mujer con un ondulante vestido rojo. Mucho después de que ella haya dejado su visión, su recuerdo continúa rondando su mente. Se enamora instantáneamente de ella e intenta todo para conocerla mejor. Ayudando a Étienne a atrapar a su escurridiza dama de rojo están sus tres torpes amigos, que tienen aventuras secretas y/o engañan a sus esposas.
Irène is the unhappy wife of a wealthy publisher, Jacques Voisin-Larive, who cares about her no more than a beautiful piece of furniture. Her meeting with Étienne, a young cabinetmaker with whom she falls in love, turns her dismal existence upside down. Not wanting to reveal her condition to her lover, she pretends to be a modest maid, employed by the Voisin-Larive. At the end of a weekend spent with her lover, Irène discovers that she is pregnant. The fragile balance of their existence is suddenly broken. Taking the initiative, she reveals her affair to Jacques and tells him about her desire to divorce. But her husband has no intention of giving her back her freedom...
Roberto, a 10-year-old boy, is drawn to music. An old organist discovers his gifts, and begins his musical education which will lead him to the head of an orchestra.
Young Amélie is currently enjoying life as the kept woman of her reasonably well off boyfriend Étienne. But when Étienne is called off for military duty, he enlists his playboy friend Marcel to keep an eye on her....something of a problem seeing that he is currently looking for a woman with which to create a sham marriage so he can quickly inherit a large sum of money from his father. Then suddenly the Prince of Palestra enters into the picture and boldly asks for Étienne's romantic favors to assess whether or not he would consider taking her as his bride. What's a free-spirited girl to do?
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.
