André Dumas
Antoine Saint-Just, comrade of Robespierre and youngest member of the Committee of Public Safety, is drawn into the tempestuous political & military conflicts of France under the Terror.
This French slapstick comedy stars the musician/comedian foursome Les Charlots, as valets to the Four Musketeers. One of the film's highlights is a mutual kicking session between Cardinal Richelieu, the King, and a monk. This comedy foursome was enormously popular in 1970s France, and they made a huge number of films during that period.
On a Mediterranean cruise, a young man hired as a tour guide is intrigued by the beauty of a female interpreter hiding behind her sunglasses. He makes advances to her by venturing into a series of strange stories.
After serving together in the French Foreign Legion, a mercenary and a doctor leave the service and go their separate ways. Later, they are reunited and become involved with a caper involving millions in a high-security safe. The two men become locked in during a holiday weekend as the attempt to crack the safe's combination.
In the third and final episode of the trilogy, Fantômas imposes a head tax on the rich, threatening to kill those who do not comply.
Tulipe, is an old man who lives alone in an old railway carriage in the Argentueil region of Paris. His main passions are gardening and oil painting, but he also has a secret source of income. His godson discovers that Tulipe is actually a master forger, producing perfect copies of 10 franc notes. His godson’s girlfriend sees this as an opportunity to get very rich – but she must persuade Tulipe to forge 500 franc notes. Assuming Tulipe’s agreement, his godson and his girlfriend buy an expensive new car and luxury villa in provincial France – but there is a cruel turn of fate in store for them when Tulipe strikes up a friendship with a millionaire playboy.
Cardinal Mazarin dies, leaving a power vacuum in which the young Louis asserts his intention to govern as well as rule. Mazarin's fiscal advisor, Colbert, warns against Fouquet, the Superintendant who has been systematically looting the treasury and wants to be prime minister. Fouquet believes Louis will soon tire of exercizing power and overplays his hand by offering a bribe to Louis' mistress to be his ally. She reports this to the king who arrests Fouquet. Louis and Colbert design a brilliant strategy to keep merchants making money, nobles in debt, the urban poor working and fed, and peasants untaxed. Years later, in a coda, we see Louis exercizing the power of the sun.
Mario di Donati, a deserter from the Italian army, lives in Paris under a false name with Germaine, his French lover. When the latter learns about his hidden past, she feels hurt by Mario's lack of trust in her and she distances herself from him. In despair, Mario surrenders to the law but, at the time of trial, he runs away to join the woman he loves.
