A pompous grocer’s assistant in Marseille annoys a visiting film crew so much that they prank him with a phony acting contract; believing it to be real, the “schpountz” heads to Paris for his new career.

Following a broadcast on the radio, each of the listeners remembers these "little nothings" (the title is borrowed from a play by Mozart), which have often changed their lives. Each of these stories told will prove that a tiny detail in life can change an entire destiny.

Mr. Gustave Bourdillon loves hopelessly the wife of the director of the institution where he is the only teacher. Soon a widow, the pretty wife of Mr. Calumet, agrees to marry the brave professor, but believes each onstant that her husband has returned in the form of his brave little dog Medor. After incredible situations and an immeasurable pursuit, Gustave Bourdillon and widow Émilie will live a deserved happiness.

"Merlusse" is French schoolboy slang for codfish, and M. Blanchard, a professor at a certain lycée, was known to his victims by that name. On Christmas Eve, when some twenty of the students—orphans, foreigners or just plain "unwanteds"—had to remain in the boarding school, Merlusse is placed in charge. His glass eye glares at them stonily, his good one with no less severity. He sets them to tasks, marches like a proctor up and down the aisles, exacts to the utmost the last measure of discipline. But when the youngsters awake in the morning, there are toys by each bed in the dormitory and M. Blanchard, no longer to be called Merlusse, is exposed for the softhearted fraud he is.

In this little Provencal village, a new baker, Aimable, settles down. His wife Aurelie is beautiful and much younger than he. She departs with a shepherd the night after Aimable produces his first breads. Aimable is so afflicted that he can not work anymore. Therefore, the villagers, who initially laughed at his cuckoldry, take the matter very seriously (they want the bread) and organize a plan to find Aurelie and to bring her back to the bakery.

Cigalon (Alexandre Arnaudy) manages a restaurant in a small town in Provence. A chef with a high opinion of his past culinary achievements, he makes no effort to attract customers and is rude to those who venture into his establishment expecting to be fed. To Cigalon, gastronomy is the greatest of all the arts, and so he is naturally aghast when a former laundress named Madame Toffi (Marguerite Chabert) opens a restaurant next door to his. Madame Toffi does not share his elevated notions and intends to serve meals to the general public - an appalling prospect! While Cigalon's restaurant remains empty, Madame Toffi's is always busy. To prove he's the better chef, Cigalon must now start catering to the whims of paying customers or be forced out of business.

Leaping forward twenty years, the trilogy continues with the death of Fanny's husband, Panisse, and the discovery of her secret by her son, Césariot. The young man resolves to track down his biological father, Marius, whose life has been fraught with calamity and poverty.

The works of Marcel Pagnol are a veritable monument of French cultural heritage. Based on previously unseen archive material, film extracts, novels, plays, interviews and letters, the film pays tribute to the major author and popular filmmaker, who made his life a work and his work a life's project.