Ferdinand is an honest and almost prude chemist at the Fourageot laboratories. His boss, Mr Fourageot, is mostly busy with his mistresses but comes to be worried with his young and outgoing daughter.
When Paul, an officer, discovers Denise, a young orphan escaped from her orphanage, he takes advantage of his naivete to seduce her before changing her mind and sending her to live with her mother while sailing.
Father Vincent is trying to build a church in the California neighborhood. Greeted by stones, he must face a sinister band of deviants excited by a shady cabaret performer. The abbot resists, gradually builds his church and regenerates all the wretches with whom he lives and especially the hardest, Bibi.
The story of how the people of Paris cope with the strains and struggles of war, from the siege of the city by the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 to the invasion by the Germans in World War II.
A famous comedian decrees that his fortune will go to whoever collects as many pop star autographs as quickly as possible. When he dies, two cousins embark on the race for signatures.
Mr and Mrs Barbezat,Concierges are to marry their only daughter to a butcher's boy. Both the in-laws and the groom have an obsession: come what may, they are keen on honoring their engagements: promises are made to be kept is their motto. And when, on the wedding day, the unfortunate parents cannot provide the newly weds with...the "Mérinos" mattress which is part of the bride's Trousseau ,they are desperate. The husband will spend the whole wedding festivities trying to keep his word.
Evelyne, a woman of bourgeois origin, now reduced to dancing in a sleazy nightclub, is reunited with her first love, who has become a successful doctor.
Léopold, a young schoolboy, returns from boarding school to spend the summer vacations with his family. He is delighted to see his grandmother Eglantine again. The good times spent with all those close to him make him forget the stress of school. But with the start of the new school year fast approaching, Léopold learns of Eglantine's death.