Rural France, the 1890s. Always in motion, Augustin wanders three times. First, as a youth, while a boarder near Bourges, he's lost in the woods and finds a chateau where an engagement party's in progress: there he falls eternally in love with Yvonne and she with him. Back at school, he hears she is in Paris, so he follows in a vain search and meets a woman, jilted by her lover. In the countryside a few year's later, Augustin's friend François finds Yvonne and brings Augustin to her. They marry, but the next day, Augustin leaves to fulfill a youthful promise he made to Yvonne's brother. François comforts the pregnant Yvonne as they await Augustin's return.

In 1930s Marseilles two small-time crooks decide to join forces when they meet while brawling over a woman. Starting with fixed horse races and boxing matches, they soon find themselves doing jobs for the local gangster bosses. When they decide to go into the business for themselves, their easy-going approach to crime starts to change.

Stephane (Victor Lanoux) is the mayor of a small village. He is also the manager of the tannery which provides the inhabitants with work. In a fit of anger, he kills his wife (Edith Scob). A judge (Jean Carmet) tries to prove his culpability, but it's not an easy task, because there is a political and social pressure.

The life and career of Jean Jaurès in their social and political context.

A man sits at a cafe in Paris and watches the world go by.

A man inherits an old house in a very bad condition. With the help of a young mechanic, he begins to renovate this house.

A reformed gangster turns to his old associates for help after his son kills a police officer.

A young writer meets an enigmatic girl who becomes his obsession. Over the course of a strip poker game at a wealthy household, an extreme game of seduction takes place that comes dangerously close to death. Lattuada switches the plot's timeline from the 60s to the 80s, and the setting from Rome to Paris.

Parisian everyman Antoine Doinel has married his sweetheart Christine Darbon, and the newlyweds have set up a cozy domestic life of selling flowers and giving violin lessons while Antoine fitfully works on his long-gestating novel. As Christine becomes pregnant with the couple's first child, Antoine finds himself enraptured with a young Japanese beauty. The complications change the course of their relationship forever.

Brumaire, the director of public relations at the Élysée, is trying to boost the rating of his government.