King Michel VIII is still a child, but when revolution threatens, the young monarch's entourage lies to him and even tries to get rid of him.

In 1944, in a small village in Calvados, just as the Allies landed, a British plane was shot down. The wounded pilot seeks help. All the villagers, who speak only of resistance, refuse to help, for fear of reprisals. Only the mayor, Dr. Leproux, takes him in and nurses him back to health, then entrusts him to the Resistance. But the Germans get wind of the story and arrest Leproux. He is saved by Major Frantz. But the budding friendship between these two men "doesn't stop the drums", and the war is on.

Now Gisèle Bourjeon is the mistress of the count Hubert Martin de Kardec.After a long journey abroad Henri Lévrier, a champagne producer has come back and meets again his friends Hubert and the Bourjeon family.And surprise, Henri doesn't drink alcohol anymore.He says Gisèle that he was drinking because he loved very much.Henri and Gisèle feel well together and become lovers.

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.

WW2 is coming to an end. On the seaside, resistant fighters are captured and imprisoned in a basement. Within an hour, all of them will be shot—an hour of fear, of impossible dreams, of false hopes. Based on a Bernanos play, it sometimes recalls, by the subject of sacrifice (a sacrifice of an average human being is not an average one), "Dialogue des Carmélites," in which nuns, during the French Revolution, were guillotined because they would have betrayed their faith if they had accepted the new rules.

King Michel VIII is still a child, but when revolution threatens, the young monarch's entourage lies to him and even tries to get rid of him.