Heures Chaudes

History, advice and demonstrations of mountaineering in the Mont Blanc massif by the renowned guides of the National School of Ski and Mountaineering from Chamonix. The film starts with an historical summary illustrating the aspirations and methods that lead man to conquer the mountains. Armand Charlet teaches mountaineering techniques and takes his students to the field for glacier or rock exercises. Gaston Rebuffat makes demonstrations of particularly dangerous climbs. At altitude, people move in solitude, cold and silence, like circus acrobats without spectators, but nothing stops the modern mountaineer.

Two girls, a virtuous one and a hussy, fight for a young man in the vineyards of the south of France.

Jacques Tati plays a French postman adamant to prove he can be just as fast as American postmen at delivering mail.

An unscrupulous young man uses his "fiancée", who haunts gambling halls, to recruit the collaborators he needs to pull off his scams. When these unlucky gamblers are driven to dishonor by debts, he has his fiancée lend them money, and the next day he has them write checks, which of course bounce. All they have to do then is walk straight ahead, her charm encouraging them to do so. But the carefully planned hold-up at the home of a wealthy American tax dodger is a fiasco. The thief finds the safe already emptied by the very man who reported the bargain. But the unfaithful informer is fooled in turn: the loot he was about to take away in an Air-France suitcase is innocently snatched by a group of nuns who take the wrong luggage and unknowingly take off with 500 million dollars.

Mr. Placard, impresario of shock, lost the headliner of his show, Elia Tarti. Amédée introduces himself, he can highlight his gifts of fantasy. Randomly along the way, Amédée notices a seductive hitchhiker named Cigale. This one disappears again, kidnapped by Prince Kanaga. Assisted by a friend, Amédée flies in his footsteps and discovers in Nice that Cigale is none other than Elia Tari, capricious, disdainful and snobbish star.