Two average French people decide to paste wallpaper in the dining room of one of them. The result is not up to their intentions.

Stuck in a loveless marriage, bourgeois industrialist Francois falls in love with Janine, another man's wife. Francois sets up Janine as his mistress, and she, mercenary soul that she is, likes the set-up so much that she continues the relationship even when her own husband returns from WW II. In the long run, however, Janine is the loser in the situation.

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 …

The rise of a canning maker and then his abandonment of the factory because his ideal of social progress for his workers is undermined by the Board of Directors.

A wealthy businessman joins his servant, who has won a winter getaway, on the trip, but at the hotel where they stay the servant is mistaken for the master.

A couple get married, not out of love, but to get away from their families. When they run out of gas and have to stop at a mountain hotel, they discover their love is now real.

Ginette, a Parisian seamstress, lives poorly but happily with her musician lover. When Count la Ferronnière offers to teach her the manners and behaviours that will open her the doors to a richer world, she quickly chooses wealth over love.

At the English court, at the beginning of the 18th century, Lady Henriett fell in love with a farmer, Lionel, who, following a mistake, believes her to be his servant. By learning his quality, Lionel refuses to receive the one he already considered his fiancée. The queen herself will appease this lover's quarrel and, moreover, will free the peasants of his kingdom.

Political turmoil convulses 19th-century Russia as Razumov, a young student preparing for a career in the czarist bureaucracy, unwittingly becomes embroiled in the assassination of a public official.