Yves Allégret

A compilation of segments covers the seven deadly sins of greed, wrath, envy, pride, lust, sloth, and gluttony.

Life in a small Mexican village where joy and misery, hope and pain, passion and guilt, love and decay, life and death are mixed in the peasants life and two French citizens who end up stranded in there, during a typhoid epidemic.

French film favorite Edwige Feuillere plays a high-class gangster's moll named Maine. When Maine's first husband and daughter pay a visit, it's an awkward time for our heroine and her current amour, gang boss Godot (Jean Servais). In addition to fielding a lot of embarrassing questions, Godot also has to deal with a pesky turf war with a rival mobster. Not that the ex-husband is a paragon of virtue: he's busy trying to get even with a crooked business associate.

The family of a Parisian shop-owner spends a day in the country. The daughter falls in love with a man at the inn, where they spend the day.

During the cold and rainy off-season a man arrives in a seaside town and, giving his name only as Pierre, checks into the only hotel which remains open. His arrival arouses curiosity and a degree of suspicion, as people note that he appears to know the area, yet gives no explanation for his presence at that bleak time of year in the dead-end town.

Celestin works as an organist at a girl's school. By day, Celestin is the meek and mild target of the girls' incessant practical jokes. By night, however, he is the celebrated composer of popular operas -- and the romantic vis-à-vis of a celebrated stage star. When schoolgirl Denise stumbles onto Celestin's secret, she threatens to tell all -- but only if Celestin refuses to escort her to the opening night of his latest opera. As a result, Denise falls in love with a handsome young soldier, while Celestin is accidentally shipped off to an army camp. A series of silly coincidences brings happiness to all concerned by fade-out time.

The life of a weak-willed man is thrust into a downward spiral by the scheming of his manipulative girlfriend and her mother.

Dismissed from the railroads in 1863 for his union activities, Etienne Lantier found a job at the Voreux coal mine. But work was hard, wages were low and safety left much to be desired. Lantier tried to organize the miners into a union. When mine manager Hennebeau refused to negotiate, the workers launched a general strike, which ended with the intervention of the troops.

Soon after Marius's departure, Fanny learns that she is pregnant with his child, to the disappointment of her mother and of Marius's father, César. To secure a better life for her unborn child, she accepts a marriage proposal from the aging widower Honoré Panisse.

A professor and his wife suffer humiliation at the hands of an invading college dissidents protest.

Two female agents from a rival gang are sent to disrupt the operations of a gold-smuggler's caravan in Africa.

A lieutenant, at the head of a commando ready to land in France, finds among his men a maquisard who had tried to kill him in the past.

A bank employee who stole money at work falls in the hands of a dangerous escaped convict whose girlfriend is going to help him out of this mess.

Prix et Profits is a 20-minute short film originally made for educational purposes and released in 9.5mm format. As the title suggests, the film follows the supply chain of a potato, from farmers to consumers, and examines the mechanisms of capitalism.

Georges,a trucker, is the single father of young Frédéric. His job prevents him from seeing his son as often as he could, as often as he should. Brought up by his grandparents, Frédéric proves a difficult child. His only friend is his twelve-year-old neighbor Rose. One day, Georges tells his son how Agnès, his mother, abandoned him at birth. Upset by such a revelation, Frédéric decides to be revenged...

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.

Dedee is a prostitute, working in Monsieur Rene's night club on Antwerp's harbour. The porter is Marco, her pimp. Dedee is not happy, until she meets Francesco, an italian sailorman. They fall in love and Dedee begins to dream about an escape of her daily dullness.

Pierre is in Hamburg on a merchant ship with his friends Georges and Jean-Marie. While they are just looking for a good time in the twenty-four hours they have to waste in the city, Pierre is seized by the memory of a young German girl, Maria, whom he had known and probably loved when he was a prisoner of war in the bombed-out port of Hamburg. He abandons his companions in search of her, but is unable to trace her, her house having been destroyed and the search services having no record of her.

After an adventurous life, Patrick has settled in the Camargue and bought a manade where he raises bulls, while the "riziers" gradually invade and transform the land. On the very day the bulls are being branded, Patrick sees Robert, a long-lost comrade just out of prison. He takes him in and asks for nothing, despite the general hostility. In fact, Robert begins by poaching young Paco, son of the gardian-chef, by offering to rob a bank; then he covets his friend's almost-fiancée, Zeffa; finally, he organizes a devastating expedition against the rice farmers, in short, he behaves like a real "dog in a poke", sowing discord and brawl everywhere.

Raven, a mobster just released from prison, settles the score by murdering Mendetta and her partner, who had turned him in. Having taken over Mendetta's various bars, he finds himself at war with other mobsters who want to kill him.

1939 : what a beautiful year for Claudia and Jerôme. No sooner do they meet that they are under each other's spell. 1939 : what a horrible year for the two lovers : war breaks out before they can get married. They meet again after the war but the enchantment has vanished. They decide to marry but it will be for reason, not for love. Miracles only happen once.

Nicole tries to seduce a young man who lead a bohemian life in an untidy flat with his three pals.

A handsome but penniless young man takes a summer job as a swimming instructor in a picturesque Alpine lake resort. He falls in love with a young heiress who is staying there with her father, but he also grabs the attention of tomboyish Puck who lives on the other side of the lake and who saves him from drowning one foggy night. Further havoc is caused by the arrival of Eric's old sweetheart whose husband is wanted by the police.

In Vendée, a little boy, Paul Guillet, is abandoned by his mother who places him in public assistance. He will go from host family to host family, these various experiences gradually shaping his personality. Graine d'ortie is a French television series in twenty-six thirteen-minute episodes, broadcast from June 1, 1973 on the first ORTF channel. It is also the title of the autobiographical novel by Paul Wagner from which the television series is inspired. In Quebec, it was broadcast from September 1, 1974 on Télévision de Radio-Canada, and rebroadcast from December 14, 1986 on TVJQ.