A thousand-franc bill passes from the pocket of an old rentier into the purse of an obscure star, then into the hand of a gigolo, back to its first owner, back to the star and ends its round in a dustbin, scorned by a beggar.

A father allows himself to be accused of the murder of a blackmailer to save his son who is the real murderer. But he is forced to confess, and commits suicide in his cell.

A renowned sculptor aged about fifty years, François Bressolles falls for the young Catherine Collet whom he convinces without difficulty to pose for him. Complications ensue when he starts to go blind.

Simon's life is troubled by images of a crime which happened in his family a hundred years ago. While traveling in south France, he finds the landscape familiar. That's when he meets Catherine and falls in love. But her lover comes back and his strong personality attracts her again.

In a town on the banks of the Saône1 Grasalard, a butcher, likes to feast and play boules with his friends. Although married, he falls in love with another woman.

Bitru is a carefree fellow who, one day, decides to buy a houseboat on the River Seine. He moves there and starts living surrounded by a circle of colorful friends. Among them, the daughter of an auto maker but also a group of scientists who have developed "Aqua Simplex", a device that could enable motorists to fill their tanks with... water ! Panic sets in in the automobile industry and Bitru is appointed his friends' middle man to represent them on the various car makers directors' boards.

Henri Chatelard is well into his forties, owns a restaurant and a cinema in the city, and appreciates women. When he meets Marie, an 18-ish strong-head who just lost her father in a small fishing village, it is not clear who is the hunter and who is the prey.

A provincial ingenue leaves her mother’s tobacco shop with dreams of a life in the Parisian theater, only to become entangled in relationships with a lecherous aristocrat, his starry-eyed nephew, and an old ham actor.

Gaston, nicknamed Pilou, has left his native village and Yvette, the girl of his heart, to go to Paris where he has found work as a painter. He is a naive good-natured man who, like most of his fellow-workers, favors a little song or two while he works. For the time being he is busy repainting the exterior of a block of flats and, when he does not sing to pass the time, he looks through the windows, observing the tenants in their daily lives. As time goes by, he goes as far as intervening and changing the course of their lives. In the end, despite having found a lookalike of his fiancée, he returns to her.

Cochu, a peasant, is the whipping boy of his regimental comrades. He is called "buffer of the capiston", that is to say the captain's order. But he finds himself in the service of Hortense, the captain's sister.