For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.

Paul, a friendly Parisian cab driver, has two loves: music and his fiancée Virginie. After graduating from the Conservatoire with a first prize, he lives on hope, offering his classical works to publishers. One day, while driving customers to the races, he plays a "toquard": Maubeuge, who wins. With his friends, he celebrates the event and, for dessert, composes a song for the occasion: "Tout ça ne vaut pas un clair de lune à Maubeuge". Monique, a secretary at the radio station and one of the guests, had a record made of the tape recording. And this record, following a mistake, was broadcast on a religious music program. It's a runaway success: for Paul, it's fame and fortune. which he had obviously coveted, but more with his symphonies, opera and sonatas. No matter, the "Clair de lune à Maubeuge" (Moonlight in Maubeuge) allows two happily engaged couples to become happily married.

A fairy godmother helps a princess disguise herself so she won't have to marry her father.

A professor of philosophy, an atheist, converts to Catholicism following a miracle: his daughter, whose leg must be amputated, is taken to Lourdes by her very religious fiancé, and is cured there.

A policeman and a serial killer play cat and mouse in an isolated mountain village in Nineteenth century France. The second film directed by the man who played the admirable lead role in Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped is a stylized and intense adaptation of a novel by Jean Giono. This police investigation in a 19th century village combines visual beauty with the rigor of the mise-en-scène—the vertigo of the criminal motivations indivisible from the refined graphics of the images.

Charming and innocent, Candide is vigorously chased away by the Baron, for his close encounters with the pretty Cunégonde. World War II breaks out, and when he is drafted and taken prisoner, he is forced to take German nationality and ends up guarding the camp where he was imprisoned. He crossed into Switzerland, but as he had no bank account, he was incarcerated for eight days for trespassing. Hunted by the Gestapo, he kills two men to free Cunégonde, who has finally been found. They both flee to Argentina, and their world tour begins. In Paris, Moscow, New York, Borneo and Alexandria. They try to follow Dr. Pangloss' optimistic rule of life. Tossed about, separated, they find themselves grown old and wiser, thinking only of cultivating their garden on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Edmond Dantès, who was active in the resistance against the Nazis, is accused for being a Nazi collaborator and is imprisoned in the fortress of Sisteron.

André Loriot works for Dr Clairac in a laboratory producing euphoric pills. He searches in vain for an apartment where he can settle down and start a family with the woman who loves him, Juliette. To motivate himself and cope with the setbacks he encounters, he decides to swallow an excessive dose of euphoriants.

In Castallet, a village in Provence, cats are swarming and disturbing the peace and quiet of the inhabitants. The municipality decides to get rid of these invasive felines, but a group of children nicknamed "la bande à Bobo" (Bobo's gang) comes to their defense.

A young duke marries a girl, also penniless, and moves into a bus left him by an uncle, with their ten children. At last he finds the bus is made of solid gold.