During World War II, two French civilians and a downed British Bomber Crew set out from Paris to cross the demarcation line between Nazi-occupied Northern France and the South. From there they will be able to escape to England. First, they must avoid German troops – and the consequences of their own blunders.
In this riot of frantic disguises and mistaken identities, Victor Pivert, a blustering, bigoted French factory owner, finds himself taken hostage by Slimane, an Arab rebel leader. The two dress up as rabbis as they try to elude not only assasins from Slimane's country, but also the police, who think Pivert is a murderer. Pivert ends up posing as Rabbi Jacob, a beloved figure who's returned to France for his first visit after 30 years in the United States. Adding to the confusion are Pivert's dentist-wife, who thinks her husband is leaving her for another woman, their daughter, who's about to get married, and a Parisian neighborhood filled with people eager to celebrate the return of Rabbi Jacob.
Don Sallust is the minister of the King of Spain. Being disingenuous, hypocritical, greedy and collecting the taxes for himself, he is hated by the people he oppresses. Accused by The Queen, a beautiful princess Bavarian, of having an illegitimate child to one of her maids of honor, he was stripped of his duties and ordered to retire to a monastery.
Charles Duchemin, a well-known gourmet and publisher of a famous restaurant guide, is waging a war against fast food entrepreneur Tri- catel to save the French art of cooking. After having agreed to appear on a talk show to show his skills in naming food and wine by taste, he is confronted with two disasters: his son wants to become a clown rather than a restaurant tester and he, the famous Charles Duchemin, has lost his taste!
This film originated as a play in Paris. The story focuses on the one-day adventures of Bertrand Barnier played with a genius of French cinema, Louis de Funes. In the same morning he learns that his daughter is pregnant, an employee stole a large amount of money from his company, his maid is about to resign in order to marry a wealthy neighbor and his body builder is interested in marrying his daughter. The seemingly complicated story-line is full of comedy or errors and some of the most hilarious mime scenes of the French cinema.
In this Franco-Italian gangster parody, a shopkeeper on his way to an Italian holiday suffers a crash that totals his car. The culprit can only compensate his ruined trip by driving an American friend's car from Naples to Bordeaux, but as it happens to be filled with such contraband as stolen money, jewelry and drugs, the involuntary and unwitting companions in crime soon attract all but recreational attention from the "milieu".
The ambitious police officer Cruchot is transferred to St. Tropez. He's struggling with crimes such as persistent nude swimming, but even more with his teenage daughter, who's trying to impress her rich friends by telling them her father was a millionaire and owned a yacht in the harbor.
In the second episode of the trilogy Fantômas kidnaps distinguished scientist professor Marchand with the aim to develop a super weapon that will enable him to menace the world. Fantômas is also planning to abduct a second scientist, professor Lefebvre.
The Saint-Tropez police launch a major offensive against dangerous drivers. Marechal Cruchot (Louis de Funès) relishes the assignment, which he pursues with a manic zeal. Cruchot is after an offending driver, who turns out to be Josépha (Claude Gensac), the widow of a highly regarded police colonel. When they meet, Cruchot falls instantly in love....
Fantômas is a man of many disguises. He uses maquillage as a weapon. He can impersonate anyone using an array of masks and can create endless confusion by constantly changing his appearance.
Hubert de Tartas' life becomes a complete muddle when his wife's grandfather is unearthed after having spent 65 years in frozen hibernation in the polar circle. After being de-frosted, the Hibernating Man believes it is still the beginning of the century. Nothing is spared to keep that illusion alive. At the end of his rope, Hubert blurts out the truth and takes the man from Edwardian times on a crazy spree through an ultramodern Twentieth Century.
The Gendarme and the Creatures from Outer Space (1979)
The bungling inspector Cruchot finds himself trying to save the residents of St. Tropez from some oil-drinking humanoid aliens. The only way to tell the aliens from the real people, besides their constant thirst for oil-products, is that they sound like empty garbage cans when you touch them. Chaos is ahead.
Guillaume has made it: A machine that can clean dirty air by simply sucking all dirt into air balloons and then shipping them far far away so his explanation. Some Japanese business guys, after dinner with a lot of alcohol, order 5,000 pieces. His only problem: His production capacity is way to small so he gets to produce the machines in his private house. His wife Bernadette is far from being happy about it. Her private life goes down the line so she decides to leave Guillaume and to finally have revenge she candidates for major against her husband...
The whole clique of Cruchot's police station is retired. Now he lives with his rich wife in her castle - and is bored almost to death. He fights with the butler, because he isn't even allowed to do the simple works. But when one of the clique suffers from amnesia after an accident, all of the others reunite and kidnap him, to take him on a tour to their old working places and through their memories. In their old uniforms they turn St. Tropez upside down.
Louis-Philippe Fourchaume, another typical lead-role for French comedy superstar Louis de Funès, is the dictatorial CEO of a French company which designs and produces sail yachts, and fires in yet another tantrum his designer André Castagnier, not realizing that man is his only chance to land a vital contract with the Italian magnate Marcello Cacciaperotti. So he has to find him at his extremely rural birthplace in 'la France profonde', which proves a torturous odyssey for the spoiled rich man; when he does get there his torment is far from over: the country bumpkin refuses to resume his slavish position now the shoe is on the other foot, so Fourchaume is dragged along in the boorish family life, and at times unable to control his temper, which may cost him more credit then he painstakingly builds up...
Evan Evans, the director of a ballet troupe, is rehearsing his next show in Monaco, in preparation for a worldwide tour. When one member of his troupe leaves to get married, Evans imposes a regime of strict discipline on his remaining dancers. The latter get their revenge by presenting Evans’ nephew Philippe, the only male member of the group, with a baby and a note claiming he is the father…
The children of Harpagon, Cléante and his sister Elise, are each in love but they still haven’t spoken to their father yet. Harpagon is a miser who wants to choose the right man and the right woman for his children. Based on Molière’s play.
Shopkeeper Victor Garnier has naively invested his family's life savings in an African mine, on his banker's recommendation. When the mine is nationalized, rendering the stock worthless, he considers himself shamelessly robbed by the bank; it seems only fair to him to return the 'favor' and rob the bank, teaming up with the whole family as they were all duped. Even for professionals such an enterprise -he decides to dig a tunnel- is quite demanding, but for simple commoners it's daunting, as they also have their personal downsides; thus Victor's wife has a most unwelcome tendency to blurt out the truth, even to the grumpy local copper: a crazy risk when you need to keep a criminal plan secret.
Cruchot's police office moves into a new building. They do not only get high tech equipment, but also four young female police officers to educate. All of them scramble to work with them -- and cause pure chaos while being distracted by the fine ladies. Then they get into real trouble when one after the other of their female colleagues is kidnapped.
Monsieur Bosquier, the owner of a private school, is far from pleased when his eldest son, Philippe, fails his end of year exams. He decides to send his wayward offspring to England to improve his English. In exchange, Philippe’s host, a wealthy whisky distiller, Mac Farrel, will send his daughter, Shirley, to live with the Bosquiers in France. However, Philippe has already decided to spend the summer holidays on a yacht with his friends, so he sends a fellow student, Michonnet, to England in his place. The deception is soon discovered but things go from bad to worse when Philippe and Shirley fall in love and fly to Scotland to get married...
Paul Braconnier and his wife Blandine only have one thing in mind: to find a way to kill each other without risk. After listening to a radio show, Paul decides to go to Paris to meet a famous lawyer in the acquittal of the murderers. He tells the lawyer that he killed his wife. The lawyer asks Paul to reconstruct the circumstances of the drama. Without knowing it, he explains, in spite of himself, the way for Paul to murder his wife by putting the odds on his side to avoid death penalty or even be released...
Léonard Monestier owns a large fortune, alas his wife Cynthia made a bad investment in a worthless oil concession. Far from letting this get him down, Léonard decides to find a sucker to buy this concession from him. Right on cue appears Antoine Brévin, a befuddled billionaire who is very interested in Léonard's beautiful daughter Patricia and would do anything to win her hand...
Mr. Pezzella owns and operates a well-established luxury-clothing store. He does not like and does not consider it right to pay taxes and therefore uses a tax consultant to be able to evade more taxes.
Henry Roubier, a French promoter, and Enrico Mazzini, an Italian, have signed an agreement guaranteeing them a stranglehold on European highways. While driving on the roads of the south, Roubier takes two young hitchhikers, but an unfortunate swerve the car rushes by Henri and its occupants on the top of a pine tree onto the side of a cliff.
1947, in France, Antoine and Antoinette, a young couple living in Paris, lead a monotonous existence: he works in a print shop while she is a shop assistant. But one evening, they regain hope: Antoine finds a winning lottery ticket in his girlfriend's handbag. He decides to cash it in, but loses his wallet. What follows is a series of twists and turns that redefine the couple's priorities while forcing them to remain optimistic.
The film consists of seven roughly 15 minute episodes, each showing what will happen if one or more of the Ten Commandments will be broken: Jérome Chambard is warned that he will lose his job if he continues to swear; Françoise Beaufort enamored of a stripper calls on her only to find her married to a janitor who doesn't know what kind of dancing his wife performs; Denis, a Jesuit novice, leaves the order to avenge his sister's suicide, which was provoked by Garigny, who seduced her into prostitution and drug addiction; Philip buys a necklace for Micheline though he is bored with her; a young man find out that his real mother is not Madeleine, but actress Clarisse Ardant; Didier Marin, cashier of a bank, was fired by his boss; the Devil appears as a serpent for Jérome Chambard and the bishop are eating.
Paul Martin is the subservient brown-nosing youngster who needs quick advancement up the hierarchy to pay for the modern lifestyle he is buying on credit. Seeing that marrying his immediate superior's daughter will not get him the results he wants, he begins plotting the demise of the head of the company. The company itself specializes in holiday travel and unscrupulously brutalizes its customers for maximum profit, spending more thought on publicity gimmicks than customer service...
Jockey Jack has a bill open with a gangster just released from jail. He somehow manages to parry the gangster's knife attack backstage at a theatre and the latter ends up dead being put into a double bass case. A day later the gangster mysteriously has disappeared, but it turns out that he was carrying a bet ticket for a horse race now worth over a million. A turbulent run for the money begins.
Marcel, a simple-minded factory worker, is tricked into buying a high-priced American convertable car by a widow determined not to let it fall into the hands of her late husband's secretary/secret lover. Once in pocession of the car, Marcel only encounters one bad luck episode after another with the excessive gasoline consumtion, his wife trying to sell it to make ammends meet, getting into traffic jams, accidently riding into a car wash with the top down, and more.
A small-town policeman is informed that "naked women" are dancing in a revue at a local variety theater. Being the guardian of public morals that he is, he decides to stroll on down there and check it out for himself.
The film consists of three novels. The film begins with the fact that the Bernard Blier hero removes a lantern from the entrance to a brothel. The second part is about how the lantern and jewelery were stolen from a young baroness. And in the third part the hero of Louis de Funes hangs a lantern at the entrance to his house.
A ruined Baron Philippe de baron, meets one day a troupe of traveling actors led by Herod. Attracted by the one who plays the role of the ingenue: Isabella, and by the dynamism and enthusiasm of his companions, he takes the place of the deceased poet of the troupe. And during performances, Philippe became the captain Sunder. For his part, Isabelle loves Philip, but does not consider marriage, nobility him missing, she refuses to harm the career of Baron. And one day, the Duke of Vallombrosa, seduced by Isabella, finds himself challenged to a duel by Philippe for touching the girl. Defeated, he launched his men against Sunder, then removes Isabelle. The actors throw themselves then to storm the castle where she is being held. This time Vallombrosa was seriously injured, and the duke's own father, rushed to the scene, Isabelle discovers the girl he had once been an actress. Nothing stands now the union of Sunder and Isabella, under the tender gaze of the actors Herod and Scapin.
Pierre Cousin, a depressive compositor, wants to die. After five vain attempts at committing suicide, he decides to hire professional hit men to do the job on him. But as he's waiting for death, he accidentally saves a suicidal young woman's life... and falls in love. Having suddenly found a reason to live, he now fears the killers he himself hired. Is there still time to call off his contract?
An account of the last two centuries of the Anthropocene, the Age of Man. How human beings have progressed so much in such a short time through war and the selfish interests of a few, belligerent politicians and captains of industry, damaging the welfare of the majority of mankind, impoverishing the weakest, greedily devouring the limited resources of the Earth.
The scene is a tawdry hotel room in Limbo, where several damned souls are gathered. At first, the group fails to comprehend where they are or why they're there. When the horrible truth dawns upon them, they carp and snipe at one another, blaming everyone but themselves for their dismal fate.
Historical film directed and written by Sacha Guitry follows the the history of Paris from its founding through the significant events in the city's history.
