La Route du bagne

Luc Froment, a reform-minded engineer, starts working at a steel mill in a small town. There he founds small groups of workers (and their families) under miserable conditions. Under the influence of Fourier's ideas, Froment tries to turn the mill into a workers' co-operative.

Yasmina, a rich Tunisian Princess, daughter of a French lady and a Muslim gentleman, is betrothed by a father to a rich fifty year old man named Afsen. She reluctantly accept the marriage but soon becomes ill from boredom and she falls in love with the French doctor called from Tunis to take care of her, Hector Grandier, who also happens to be a childhood friend. Her husband finds out and Yasmina sticks a knife in her own bosom in a middle of a fight. The Princess's maid, Athima, accuses the old husband of attempting to kill the girl and he is sentenced to death. Hector rescues him from his fate and the two lovers are free to love each other in the eyes of the law.

The turkey keeper, Bettina, brings good luck to those who make her work. She becomes the mascot of the good King Laurent XVII whose finances are in bad shape. In order for her to retain her beneficial power, an attempt is made to separate her from her lover, but in vain.

A little Métis girl, Kalina is saved from a massacre by Taraor, a black man from Sudan. Having become a great and beautiful dancer from the South, she meets Captain Portal, in garrison in Marrakech. This is the beginning of a great love story. But that's counting without Taraor's jealousy.

Captain Benoit successfully completes a mission in Berlin, but when he returns to Paris he escapes attacks by German agents.

A middle-aged man, an architect by trade, decides to make an end run around getting married. He marries a charming young woman, tenderly in love, who proves incapable of holding him back and, above all, of making him work. But a young American arrives in Paris and reveals that he is the architect's natural son. At first reluctant, the latter and his young wife quickly adapt to the new situation, until the son, a businessman through and through, wants to share with his father his ideas on life, which can be summed up in one sentence: hard work, with no time for pleasure. The father is quick to balk, and the son is forced to unwillingly participate in the fickle architect's nightlife. Eventually, the father is able to settle down, while the son, having acquired a taste for love, has a good time.

Jacques de Chardin, runner of women, marries a rich and young American, Mary-Ann. He does not give up, however, his conquests and has an affair with Chouquette. His wife and her friend, Baron Sigismond, decide to fake an affair in order to get revenge.

A Nazi spy has stolen a gas mask filter of formidable efficiency in Paris. Two agents from the 2nd office have the task of going to take him back to Berlin.

Despite her success, writer Francine Margerie is let down to see that she is not nominated for the Legion of Honor award. One solution could be to sleep with Champmorel, the Director of Fine Arts and one of the judges for the awarding of the coveted medal.

Between the feelings of the man who believes himself to be deceived and of the surgeon's instinct, it is the latter which triumphs in Doctor Bernon, who saves the man presumed to be his wife's lover. He then realizes that this is not the case and that she is still worthy of him.

Monsieur Vincent is the respected healer of a Basque village. But nobody knows that Vincent Berteaux used to be a surgeon in Paris. When Assomption, a young holidaymaker, arrives in the village in the company of her mother, little does Vincent know that the past returns to his life.

An ambitious and perverse adventurer sows dissension and ruin in a wealthy family of industrialists.

Jacques Averil leads an idle life which plunges him into weariness and melancholy. When he learns of the suicide of his father, a banker ruined by dark speculation in Icelandic minerals, he decides to take charge. An old friend of his father offers him the opportunity to join as a sailor.

In 1917, in a small village in the North, Abbe Gaillard is suspected by the Germans of facilitating the escape of French and Belgian soldiers. A false alibi makes him innocent and he can thus continue his mission, thanks to the devotion of an Alsatian who, in enemy uniform, obscurely serves his country.

Georges Vinot nicknamed Bouboule, a colorful but naive Parisian, falls prey to a gang of diamond thieves. Not only do they manipulate him into smuggling stolen precious stones into Senegal but they have bought life insurance on his head, which means they are prepared to do anything to liquidate him. But Bouboule succeeds in thwarting all their traps and eventually decides to settle down in a Senegalese village, of which he becomes... king!