Marc Dudicourt
Sheherazade has been married to a ruler who wants many wives, but only one at a time. Consequently, as soon as he has bedded them, he has them put to death. In most retellings, the girl staves off this unfortunate conclusion by putting off the connubial event for a thousand and one nights, telling irresistible stories instead. In this one, she gets hold of a magic lamp.
Antoine, a professor of Greek, and Lise, a police inspector, honeymoon in Greece. There they meet a young couple, Charles, an archaeologist, and Agnes, a dishy flirt. Charles unearths the lovely buttocks of a classical statue and is determined to donate it to the Louvre. Agnes wants to sell it and gets a handsome local sailor to take it for an appraisal. When the sailor is murdered, the police suspect Charles and arrest Antoine as his accomplice. Lise swings into action, but before she can clear the men, Agnes springs them from jail, and now Lise must help them elude the police, find the real murderer, and recover the statue fragment. More art goes missing. What is the statue's secret?
Victor Vautier is incorrigible: he's in constant motion, working several cons at once, using different names and changing disguises. He's charming and outrageous, incapable of uttering a sentence that isn't embellished or an outright lie. His life goal is to make enough money to build a sea wall to protect Mont-Saint-Michel. Charlotte, a parole officer, shows up: she's young and seems taken in by Victor. He discovers she lives above the Senlus Museum, where her parents are the curators. With two pals he decides to steal a priceless El Greco triptych and then ransom it back to the cultural ministry. What will Charlotte do when she realizes he's used her to make a fortune?
"In Serieux comme le plaisir, two men and a woman live quite happily together in a romantic liaison. The woman is probably wealthy anyway, so the trio doesn't worry much about money. One day they decide to take a trip in their beat-up car, managing the whole affair in their own special, insouciant manner. They are followed by a suspicious policeman who thinks there's something fishy about this group..."
A queen lives secluded in her chambers, mourning the loss of her husband on their wedding day ten years from then. Stanislas, a suicidal poet and anarchist, enters her apartments with the intent of killing her. When he appears, wounded, fleeing the guards, she is struck by his resemblance to the late king...
Malisard is a reporter at "Soir de Paris", his colleague Prévot is a photographer. Together, they roam the streets of Paris.
Anne and Lore, neighbors and best friends, barely into their teens, board at a convent school where they have taken a vow to sin and to serve Satan. Anne keeps a secret diary, they read a salacious novel, they get a classmate in trouble, they spy on the nuns, they set aside their communion wafers; they make a pact of devotion.
Nicolas Philibert goes to America after killing a French aristocrat. On his return he tries to divorce his wife, Charlotte, but when he sees others trying to woo her his own interest is rekindled.
Gabriel Pelletier's life is no bed of roses. Not because of his job: he is a successful sales manager. But on account of the various wrongdoings committed by his kin. First, there is his daughter Nicole, who has just developed an infatuation with a young man who is not only a revolutionary student but the the son of a Sicilian mobster as well. Then he has to cope with Bernard, his brother-in-law, a ladies'man who has been vamped by one of the sexy daughters of the Sicilian. Let's not forget Albert, his own brother, an avant-garde filmmaker also in trouble with Lombardi, the omnipresent gangster. To crown it all, Maryse, his domestic worker, is a Maoist militant!... In the end, poor Gabriel can't take it anymore. He hits the road and calls it quits.
Alexandre, a young and honest farmer, is oppressed by an authoritarian wife, who makes him work like a dog. When she dies in a car crash, he decides to stay in bed, absolutely free and inactive. Just a dog is occupied to carry food and newspapers to him.
Sheila's uncle has just died; many of his relatives come, but,much to their displeasure, it's his niece who inherits his private detective agency. But she must first go through a training in a school: gymnastic, assault course, machine gun shooting; she must also learn how to cheat at card games .Her first mission is to find back gangster La Rafale's fiancee, Genevieve, who ran away with another gang. She meets a handsome Interpol lieutenant she falls in love with.
In Paris around 1900, Georges Randal is brought up by his wealthy uncle, who steals his inheritance. Georges hopes to marry his cousin Charlotte, but his uncle arranges for her to marry a rich neighbour. As an act of revenge, Georges steals the fiance's family jewels, and enjoys the experience so much that he embarks upon a life-time of burglary.
Paula Nelson (Anna Karina), a female version of Humphrey Bogart's hard boiled detectives, goes to Atlantic City to meet her lover, Richard Politzer, at an unknown point in the future (maybe 1969). Once there, she learns that Richard is dead and decides to investigate his death. In her hotel room, she meets Typhus, whom she ends up knocking out. His corpse is later found in the apartment of David Goodis (Yves Afonso), a writer. Paula is arrested and interrogated. From then on, she encounters many gangsters.
In the countryside near Normandy's beaches lives Marie, unhappy. It's 1945, she's married to Jérôme, a somewhat fussy milquetoast, diffident to the war around him and unwilling to move his wife to Paris, where she longs to live, shop, and party. A German outfit is bivouacked at Jérôme and Marie's crumbling château because its commanding officer is pursuing Marie. She's also eyed by a French spy working with the Allies as they plan D-Day. He woos her (posing to the Germans as her brother) and, in his passion, forgets his mission. Heroics come from an unexpected direction, and Marie makes her choice.
An ornithologist mistaken for an explosives expert is sent alone into a small French town during WWI to investigate a garbled report from the resistance about a bomb which the departing Germans have set to blow up a weapons cache.
