Jean Mauvais

Henri Serin (Jean-Pierre Marielle), an umbrella salesman, leads a quiet life between his work, his family and his passion for painting. During his many business trips, Henri indulges in a few amorous escapades, which provide a welcome change from the tiresome daily routine his bigoted wife locks him into. One fine day, Henri decides to drop everything and live on love and fresh water. He ends up in Pont-Aven, where he meets Émile, a local painter imitating Gauguin, with whom he shares his drinking and other feminine attractions.

This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.

In 1880, in colonized Algeria, it was decided that the Algerian peasants of the Ouarsenis mountains would see their lands dispossessed in favor of the French colonists. Two methods were used to achieve this, either by sheer force or by a ploy forcing the fellahs to pay fines too high to be paid. The uprooted must then leave for the cities, swelling the mass of proletarians in the slums ...

Casti and Trébois, two friends who are workers at the same factory, have developed a common passion for flying. They dream of starting an aviation club. In the meantime they spend all their Sundays restoring an old plane under the supervision of Raf, a former RAF pilot...

Antoine Rossi, a recidivist prisoner of war in Germany, manages to escape with the cowardly Fendard. Fendard does everything in his power to help him even though he is wounded, but Antoine tries to get rid of him as he boards the train to freedom.

The story of a notorious French criminal gang of the 1910s.

A woman avenging the death of her lover thwarts a conspiracy plotted by a group of former compatriots of Napoleon.

Yves Tréguier, a young orphan, escapes from a reform school in Brittany to join "Dédé la Glace" in Paris, an old-timer with whom he has a sincere friendship. The love of Zette, a young girl he has met, and the benevolent friendship of Father Blain, the bistro owner, give him the desire for regular work. "Jo le Grec", a pimp jealous of Dédé's friendship with Yves, seduces Wanda, a prostitute he loves, and shoots Dédé dead. Blain prevents him from doing the same to Yves, and shoots him in turn. Yves can live an honest life with Zette and the baby she's expecting.