During World War II, two French civilians and a downed British Bomber Crew set out from Paris to cross the demarcation line between Nazi-occupied Northern France and the South. From there they will be able to escape to England. First, they must avoid German troops – and the consequences of their own blunders.

It is one thing to open a beauty salon (which Edwige and her young lover Gaston have just done) but it is another to keep it on its feet.To best promote their speciality, fountain-of-youth treatments, Edwige decides to apply to the letter the old slogan "It pays to advertise" by posing as... Gaston's mother, a sixty-year-old woman, miraculously grown younger.

A gang of drug pushers is rampant on the French Riviera. The police has been informed and arrests an accomplice who is about to collect the drugs dropped off from a yacht. This person happens to be a public figure of a nearby village...

Charles Walter, a forestry contractor, has helped Noël Portal to start a new life. When Victor, the new foreman and Charles'wife's lover, is found murdered, everything points to the guilt of the deceived husband. To save his benefactor, Noël decides to accuse himself of the the crime. He is condemned to death.

François Donge, a rich industrialist and womaniser, meets a girl nicknamed Bébé who he marries. Ten years later, poisoned by his wife and dying in hospital, he recalls his married life and understands how his wife who adored him suffered from his many affairs and indifference.

Is it because his father was a groom that Adhémar Pomme has a long horse head and a horse- toothed smile? Maybe but the fact is that his head has invariably caused laughter whatever the circumstances, which is the tragedy of his life. After having worked as an undertaker, a theater prompter, a casino bouncer, and so on, and failing at each job, he applies out of desperation to an institution where those rejected for physical reasons can hide and live together. But Adhémar immediately starts... laughing at them and gets kicked out as a result! In the end though, he finds his way as a circus artist.

In pre-World Ward I in Paris, a budding artist, Pierre LeBlanc, falls in love and marries Janine, a dressmaker's assistant. Pierre has a flair for designing clothes, and he and his bride live in a blissful paradise, until the war breaks out and he becomes a soldier. Janine dies in childbirth and, no longer desiring to live, Pierre volunteers for a dangerous patrol behind German lines. While recuperating in the hospital from a wound he received on the mission, Pierre spends his time drawing sketches of dresses. He becomes rich and famous after the war. Years later, after devoting himself to his daughter, Pierre seeks a marriage with a girl no older than his daughter. A conflict develops and to ensure his daughter's happiness, Pierre sacrifices his own plans.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the Duke of Gerolstein traveled to Paris. Sixteen years earlier he had a daughter who was taken from him by her mother who was chased out of the palace. After many dramatic adventures, the Duke finds his daughter in the person of Fleur de Marie, martyred throughout her childhood by the Owl and the schoolmaster.

A young woman is forced into espionage so that her father can escape blackmail. The love of an aviator helps her regain her freedom and secure the arrest of the members of the network, whose leader commits suicide before the police arrive.

Four men in love with the same woman put on a music-hall show and travel the world in search of the beauty. They will find success and fortune, but their sentimental quest will be a failure.