Un faux pélerin
Mr. Pelletan's rascal son Bébert son got another F for playing in class. His punishment is an essay on the Merovingian king Dagobert. All they know is he had eight wives and reunited Francia. The ignorant knave's irreverent imagination turns that into a harem and a ludicrous war without armies, loaded with anachronisms, in a race against rival king Charibert for the crown of Reims. The king's right hand, archbishop Eloi, the later patrons saint of carpentry, is portrayed as an inventor.
Le patron du Robinson
François Cardinaud is one of the richest shipowners in the region. But this success arouses resentment and jealousy. When Marthe, his wife, leaves the home without warning, Cardinaud sees her life cracking little by little.
Auguste, swiss waiter
In the early 1950s, the popular radio show "La Kermesse aux Étoiles", hosted by the famous Jean Nohain, mixing lottery games and performances of various artists, will be disrupted by the adventures of a man and his fiancée seeking to recover a dangerous bottle of perfume (explosive) which was unfortunately mixed with the prizes to be won ...
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.
Mr and Mrs Barbezat,Concierges are to marry their only daughter to a butcher's boy. Both the in-laws and the groom have an obsession: come what may, they are keen on honoring their engagements: promises are made to be kept is their motto. And when, on the wedding day, the unfortunate parents cannot provide the newly weds with...the "Mérinos" mattress which is part of the bride's Trousseau ,they are desperate. The husband will spend the whole wedding festivities trying to keep his word.
Yesterday night, Lazare Chantoiseau painted the town red. This morning he wakes up with a very unsettling idea in mind: he is sure to have stolen and raped a strange woman in the Luxembourg Gardens, so he decides to give himself up. On that occasion he gets to know his victim, Hortense, as well as her husband, an astronomer. Lazare realizes he is innocent, which does not prevent from becoming... Hortense's lover!
The mayor
Zoé, a pretty penniless girl, decides on the advice of her neighbor to embark on gallantry. After a brief failure, she meets a young boy, Jacques Lebreton who is about to get married. After causing the failure of this arranged marriage, she will have to play the role of wife of Jacques with his family, until the arrival of the uncle from America.
Le père de Simone
El ex conductor de locomotoras Raymond Pinsard pierde la vista como consecuencia de un accidente de trabajo. Alentado por sus familiares, decide asistir a un centro de rehabilitación, con la esperanza de recuperar parcialmente la vista...
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!
Etienne Lambolle
Fates of multiple otherwise disconnected characters intertwine miraculously under the sky of Paris. And it all happens in one day.
Endive-Meunier, a prosperous silk dealer from Lyon has an affair with his secretary he tries hard to keep secret. One day, he nevertheless accepts to accompany her to the seaside resort of Coeur-sur-Mer. Unfortunately for him, once there, he finds himself in the presence of Claudius Paquito, the popular barman of a fashionable club. The trouble is that the man is no other than one of his former employees he once fired for insolence...
Albert Topaze, sincere schoolteacher addicted to "rote" morality, works at a private school run by supremely money-grubbing M. Muche, whose daughter, also a teacher, makes cynical use of the knowledge that Topaze loves her. Alas, Topaze's naive honesty brings him unjust dismissal...and makes him fair game for the "aunt" of his private pupil, really the mistress of crooked politician Regis, who needs an honest-seeming "front man." Can artful Suzy Courtois keep Topaze on the string? With steadily escalating disillusion comes moral crisis...
Thanks to a bit of string-pulling by his aunt, Jean du Bois d'Ombelles, a young recruit who has blue blood in his veins, hopes to go through a nice and comfortable military service. Unfortunately he becomes Corporal Bourrache's pet aversion. Nevertheless, against all expectations, Jean ends up taking a liking for military life.
Monsieur Dutilleul
Josette needs to marry within a year to get her aunt's money but her fiance has left.After getting permission from her godfather for a "white wedding, " she realizes she loves the godfather instead.
The peasant Adémaï, returning home, gets lost in the forest and knocks down a border post. In his haste to replant it, he installs it upside down.
Célestin
A policeman receives a fabulous inheritance. Thanks to this, he conquers the heart of Queen Marika. But crooks deprive him of his financial means
A journalist who deals with the column "courier du cœur" has the absurd idea of launching an investigation into the death of a pianist whom he claims to have been murdered. To dazzle his wife, a reporter for the newspaper, he disguises the facts in such a way that the police suspect him, then declare him guilty. It takes a number of adventures to get him out of this mess and get him back into his section.
A spectator of the match
A soccer enthusiast like his father, Martin Lambert is the (gifted) goalkeeper of the local team. He falls in love with Jeanette and soon marries her. Alongside a happy marital life, Martin becomes a successful professional. Which proves a mixed blessing since fame makes him vain and haughty and his marriage gets seriously affected. But the Second World War breaks out and Martin is drafted. Taken prisoner a few months later, he is sent to a camp. When he is released, he tries resume his career but his wounds hurt too much and he has to give in. But not soccer: he will now proudly train young shoots.
During a singles meal, the phone rings. A woman claims a man, Jean-Louis. As a joke, the master of the house replies that he is gone forever and advises him to take the plunge. But she obeys and the suicide appears in the newspapers. Tested, the master of the house takes in the child of the unfortunate woman.
The aunt of Alfred Puc, a meek tax-collector in Paris, dies while riding in a moving van. The driver, not wishing to be bothered by a police interrogation, hides her corpse in a cupboard before notifying Alfred. But the van is stolen. Alfred, being the heir of a rich lady, begins a frantic search to locate the missing van and the cupboard because one can't claim an inheritance if there is no 'corpus delecti.' In his search, he gets caught up in an underworld web and finds the body of a murdered gangster in his room. He finally locates the cupboard but promptly loses it again. But, wait, it isn't "finis' time, yet.
Le complice
Commissioner Thomas simultaneously investigates the actions of an oil company, a theft and an assassination, and the kidnapping of a child with look-alikes.
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...
L'agent (uncredited)
Christine, the daughter of a rich American, acquires from her father the jazz band of Ray Ventura who will be made responsible for accompanying her from morning till evening wherever she goes. From an endless number of amusing situations, the fiancée of the girl despairs. But soon the musicians rebel in in the face of the requirements of their patroness. More than a job, it is for them misery. Christine excuses them and she goes back to America with her band. Things go bad, degenerate, but the kindness of the musicians and the firmness of the fiancée of Christine really quiet down the moods of the young woman .
Un joueur de belote
The local building-contractor Martin Roumagnac is fascinated by the fashionable Blanche Ferrand. To impress Blache, Martin presents her with a villa. However, this ruins him financially. Despite Martin's many efforts for the now femme-fatal Blanche, she is not able to chose between him and the rich consul De Laubry.
Lancelot
Four French conscripts are going to go on leave with their godmother, in Provence, in the company of a comrade from the British army. But, in the absence of the godmother, the five leavers end up at a mineral water merchant.
An adventure between rival spies about documents concerning the process for extracting fuel from seawater. A love story that threatens to turn tragic, since the young woman enlisted by force in the network of doctor Morenius falls in love of her rival before returning, triumphant, to her fiancé.
L'employé du museum (uncredited)
An old merchant ruined by the dot its two ungrateful daughters, moved to the Vauquer pension in Paris. In after Balzac.
Un bourgeois (uncredited)
París, 1820. Dos jóvenes artistas, Baptiste Debureau y Frédéric Lemâitre, debutan en el teatro de los Funámbulos y entablan amistad. Un día, Garance, una misteriosa y atractiva mujer, irrumpe en sus vidas. Mientras que el tímido Baptiste no se atreve a declararle su amor, Frédéric la convierte en su amante. Sin embargo, al estar implicada en una serie de crímenes, la mujer desaparece.
1824 in Issoudun. A bourgeois, Rouget, lives as a husband and wife, La Rabouilleuse, who holds him in her power. The old man's nephew, ex-Colonel Philippe Bridau of the Imperial Guard, swears to hunt the intruder.
The bartender (uncredited)
Adrien Moulinet, a modest encashing agent in the Nortier bank, is also an inventor in his spare time. His latest revolutionary creation is the motorized roller skate. His problem is to be able to market them. Jules Petitpas, a jobless adman, is the right man for that.
The hotelier (uncredited)
In 1860s France, a couple who have recently acquired a dilapidated country house in Vendôme discover within it the secret of a passionate love affaire that once took a macabre and sadly turn. it all began 50 years previously, when the wealthy landowner Gérard de Clergue fell madly in love with the beautiful young dancer Clara Biondi. In the course of the ensuing romance, Gérard remains blissfully ignorant of the fact that Clara had a previous lover, James de Poulay...
In Central Europe, an organization of counterfeiters is headed by Burcq. An Air France pilot introduces an intelligence agent to the principality. A woman, Helene, betrays them first, then in love with Francois, the pilot, helps the two friends to escape.
It's a sailors' story; they often sail away and when they return, the first thing they do is searching girls in the harbor. One of them -Jean- is shy and he does not know how to go with women. One day, he meets Yvonne and falls in love with her. But, alas, she prefers his good friend René. Another suitor, Pierre, owns the "À la Belle frégate" a café where Yvonne works as a waitress. Madam(e )Juliette, pretends she helps Yvonne and tries to make her an "entraineuse"(hostess) for less-than -handsome guests. But the girl knows better and will choose one of her suitors.
Smuggler
A woman is accused of the murder of her husband, who was jealous and brutal. Her lawyer manages to get her acquitted and they get married in the end.
L'huissier
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.
Consumer (uncredited)
The film is biographical, telling the story of the life and artistic struggles of the French composer Hector Berlioz. Berlioz is shown as a recalcitrant medical student in an anatomy class dreaming of becoming a composer; at a demonstration during a performance at the Paris Opéra conducted by Habeneck; at supper with other young artists (Hugo, Janin, Dumas, Mérimée, Delacroix); and chasing after his future wife Harriet Smithson, after a performance of Hamlet. Also depicted are his life in a garret, while suffering from an illness due to an abscess in the throat; a visit from his mother who curses him; and the composition of the Symphonie fantastique. The film then shows his marital breakdown, the premiere of his opera Benvenuto Cellini, his travels throughout Europe, his second marriage to Marie Recio (called "Marie Martin" in the film), public acceptance in old age and reconciliation with his son.
Caprices tells the story of two young rich people. A famous actress poses as a poor florist, and a distinguished society man camouflages himself as forger and swindler. This game leads them to make close relations in a series of adventures.
On a Marseille film set, a street urchin who has been hired as an actor is suspected when both a star and a baroness are robbed.With the help of the boy's neer do well friend the real crooks are tracked down.
Un inspecteur
Six friends promise to share their fortune in 5 years. The moment is very close, but one of the six is mysteriously murdered, then another... Superintendent Wenceslas Woroboyioetschik (aka Wens) is in charge of the investigation...
Monsieur Eugène
Father Vincent is trying to build a church in the California neighborhood. Greeted by stones, he must face a sinister band of deviants excited by a shady cabaret performer. The abbot resists, gradually builds his church and regenerates all the wretches with whom he lives and especially the hardest, Bibi.
A young man is hired by an industrialist, while a secret hangs over his birth. His boss's wife turns out to be his mother, who hides the truth from him.
Félix Raffut, a Périgord squire terrified by the German invasion, carries out the exodus of his family and his furniture towards supposedly hospitable places.
Le maître d'hôtel (uncredited)
In a palace in Nice, a modest valet is confused with his master, a viscount chased by a man-eater.
Le vaguemestre
In pre-World Ward I in Paris, a budding artist, Pierre LeBlanc, falls in love and marries Janine, a dressmaker's assistant. Pierre has a flair for designing clothes, and he and his bride live in a blissful paradise, until the war breaks out and he becomes a soldier. Janine dies in childbirth and, no longer desiring to live, Pierre volunteers for a dangerous patrol behind German lines. While recuperating in the hospital from a wound he received on the mission, Pierre spends his time drawing sketches of dresses. He becomes rich and famous after the war. Years later, after devoting himself to his daughter, Pierre seeks a marriage with a girl no older than his daughter. A conflict develops and to ensure his daughter's happiness, Pierre sacrifices his own plans.
A poor wretch, who has just been hired as a music-hall artist, in spite of himself becomes the tenant of a particular Parisian building.
Because the shiner Titin has fallen in love with a singer, he braves the latter's protector, the baron, and passes himself off as an insurer in connection with a pearl necklace that is circulating. Bitters get involved, Titin kidnaps the beauty and leaves the pearls to the baron.
(uncredited)
A would be blind hoodlum redeems himself in the Salvation Army just for a lovely lieutenant.
The forbidden romance between wealthy Giselle Preville and impoverished journalist Claude Dauphin. When Preville disappears, Dauphin is accused of kidnapping by the girl's snobbish father Rene Alexander. By the time the Normandie reaches New York, however, the "mystery" is solved and all misunderstandings blithely swept away.
Antoine
Two twin brothers have joined the army, Paul by vocation is a lieutenant of spahis and Georges to escape the police is a sergeant in the Foreign Legion. A snitch having informed the police of Georges' presence at the Legion, he must leave. In Casablanca, Paul helps his brother escape the police by taking his identity to allow him to regain his honor.
Sergeant Jacques Destranges randomly finds a little friend from the summer. She runs an inn where the company finds good wine and songs. Jacques makes plans for the future with her while his companions relive their peacetime memories.
An employee at a jewelry store falls in love with a woman who secretly plans to rob the store.
le lutteur
François and Victor sell hard candy at the fun fair. They also bring up Gisèle, a one-year-old child they found by the side of the road. Although the two men are often at each other's throats they are the best friends, getting on well with the other fairground people. But when they defend Lisa, the fortune teller's daughter against Dédé, a thug who pesters her, they provoke his anger. Dédé sets fire to the two friends' stand and they are forced to take the road.
Le chansonnier
What was it about opera diva Grace Moore that attracted the attention of filmdom's top directors? Moore's 1937 American movie vehicle When You're in Love had been directed by Josef Von Sternberg; two years later, her French starrer Louise was helmed by no less than Abel Gance, who a decade earlier had revolutionized the "historical epic" genre with the awesome Napoleon. There was, however, little that was revolutionary in this cinemadaption of Gustave Charpentier's opera. Moore plays Louise, a poor seamstress who is led astray by the rakish Julien (Georges Thill). After falling from grace (no pun intended), our heroine is rescued by her understanding father (Andre Pernet), who demonstrates his forgiveness by singing to her (it is, after all, an opera). Though it played to enthusiastic crowds in both London and Paris, Louise turned out to be Grace Moore's final film; conversely, Abel Gance continued to make commercial potboilers well into the 1970s.
Un agent (uncredited)
The owner of an apartment building is found murdered. Two rival policemen, Boucheron and Lambert, investigate the matter and get into the private lives of the tenants: an unfaithful judge, a crippled blind man and his daughter, an eccentric knife thrower, a shoplifter (and proud of it!), a bourgeois lady who has a bone to pick with a gigolo, a mistress who cheats on her lover, not forgetting the caretaker and a soldier in love.
Georges Legrand is a young unscrupulous reveler. He seduces Fred, a woman doctor before shamelessly dumping her for Aline Ribourg, a tennis player. Soon fed up with his new conquest, he returns to Fred. But Aline is pregnant from him. Showing an admirable sense of self-sacrifice, Fred manages to persuade Georges to marry Aline.
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.
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.
Naphtaline
Two friends, Tricoche and Cacolet, are partners in a detective agency. Chance has it that Cacolet is hired by Van der Pouf, a rich banker who wants him to watch over his wife Bernardine while the latter, on her part, seeks the services of Thicoche.
The wife of a Parisian municipal guardian wins a beauty contest in spite of herself and narrowly escapes more or less honest adventures.
Vérotchka, a vivacious theater actress touring in a provincial town, is turned out of her hotel by orders of Monsieur Tricointe, the stern president of the local law court. In a rage, the actress knocks at Tricointe's door with a view to protesting against the treatment she is given. She goes about it so well that she ends up being accommodated by the president himself. This is the moment Jean-Pierre Gaudet, the Minister of Justice, chooses to pay an unannounced visit to his friend Tricointe. There he mistakes Vérotchka for Madame Tricointe and the president does not dare to contradict Gaudet. A lot of absurd situations ensue.
La Venus D'Or (Golden Venus) was based on Business, a play by Pierre Sabatier. Mirielle Balin stars as Judith, the mistress of ruthless oil magnate Harfstrong (Jacques Copeau). What Harfstrong doesn't know is that Judith is a spy for his hated business rival. When he does find out, he cannot get rid of her because she knows too much about his own crooked dealings. After several more reels of mutual betrayal and recriminations, the story suddenly shifts to the "good" characters, clean-limned young pilot Andre (Daniel Lecourtois) and his sweetheart Michelle (Andree Giuze). Set up as a fall guy for the villains, Andre somehow emerges from the experience none the worse for wear.
Fictionalized biography of the sculptor Bartholdi.
The brave Monsieur Breloque has a friend, Pierre Martel, a private detective. When the latter asks him to replace him for a while, Breloque, although having no competence in the matter, accepts. He anticipates adventures and misadventures but also happy surprises.
A businessman, Masson, who likes to party, wants to force his partner, Chabrat, a hard worker on whom the success of their fashion store depends, not to leave Paris. For this, he agrees with a young cabaret dancer, Zizi so that she pretends, for a fee, to fall in love with Chabrat who, more than anything, wants to be loved for himself. But Zizi soon finds herself in her own trap: she is “snatched”.
Monsieur Durand-Bidon's mother-in-law is decidedly cantankerous. She never ceases - she who is a duchess - to reproach the latter for his low origins. One morning, at dawn, while he comes home "well watered", he is surprised with a comrade at the bottom of a bathtub. Taken for a homosexual, overwhelmed by Step-Mom, he will never stop trying to escape her and will end up, after many adventures, by learning a somewhat embarrassing secret about the pseudo-nobility of his step-family.
A villager
Dos hombres -uno casado y el otro, amante de la mujer del primero- coinciden en las trincheras durante la Primera Guerra Mundial y comparten los horrores de la batalla. Remake del propio Gance de una obra suya de 1919.
In 1914, during the First World War, the rich chatelaine de Boissière, with a sulphurous past, took in Jean le Barois, a young soldier lost in territory occupied by the Germans, who was none other than the son of the man she loved, then ruined. The young man, after having despised her, falls madly in love with the woman who pushed his father to suicide.
Pomme
A colonel decided to be represented at the regiment festival of a tragedy in verse by the poem written by his sister.
A young man marries the daughter of a famous actress, but is visibly more attracted to his stepmother. She manages, not without difficulty, to reconnect the bonds of a vacillating household.
A tramp learns that even honesty won't help him overcome his struggles to prosper. After a man tells him that he needs to smile in order to succeed, he turns his attitude around and he becomes successful.
After he loses a servant job when his employer's mansion burns down, a yokel makes money entertaining tourists in Breton garb, lands up appearing in a Paris show ,and meets another property owning lady, this one of dubious reputation.
Mulot
The Count of Kerlor, to chastise his wife whom he believes to be unfaithful, entrusts his son to a couple of scoundrels. When he repents and wants to find the child, the carnies make their nephew sick. But the other little boy, in search of his comrade, is recognized by his reconciled parents.
Around a baby whose paternity is disputed, the members of a bourgeois family are agitated: the irascible father, the whining mother, the modern young girl, the good-for-nothing son, a secretary in love with the young girl, an associate and the importunate old aunt who smooths things over.
Thomas
A tramp, a vagrant, returns twenty years later to the village where he had seduced a young girl. He forces her father to marry her off.
le greffier
A girl, Marie, who got engaged to a boy who is leaving for military training (thirteen days) wins two million on the raffle, thanks to an older man, Claude, whom she calls her good luck …
Head doctor
Follenfant, father of a large family, completed late military service. He looks a lot like the commander who is shy and thanks to this resemblance, Follenfant who is also a ventriloquist, makes his superior and his own happy by marrying the widowed seamstress and mother, too, of a large family.
The sentimental and comic adventures of three sailors, during a stopover of their ship in Toulon, are grafted onto a story of stolen documents, which allows the three friends to turn into amateur detectives.
Travelers who have missed their correspondence are forced to spend the night in the waiting room of a small country station. They are told that a ghost train rushes through the night on each anniversary of an accident that once took place there. A detective tries to solve the case.
Baron de Prefont
A young noblewoman is unhappy about needing to marry the village ironmaster for financial reasons, but later comes to appreciate her husband.
Croquin
An honest but naive young man is manipulated by a gang of crooks who use him as as a cover for their misdeeds. His honesty will be rewarded though and he will find the way to the heart of his beloved.
Clairette learns that Bérénice, a former mistress, is pursuing her husband in the army where he is recalled. She puts on the sergeant's uniform and after a few entanglements reconciles with her husband while Bérénice consoles herself with the captain.
Poacher, bon vivant and womanizer, Maurin falls in love with the fiancée of a policeman. And despite all the principles, he easily triumphs over his rival.
Charming Mimi-Trottin is in love with typographer Louis Chausson, nicknamed Godasse. She meets Doudou, actually a Vicomte, estranged with his parents who are rich automobile manufacturers. Godasse abandons Mimi because of his professional ambitions and Doudou rescues her from a suicide. After making peace with his parents, the young man has Mimi hired as a typist at the factory. After winning a race with one of his father's car, he soon wins the heart and the hand of Mimi.