Serge Grave

Endive-Meunier, a prosperous silk dealer from Lyon has an affair with his secretary he tries hard to keep secret. One day, he nevertheless accepts to accompany her to the seaside resort of Coeur-sur-Mer. Unfortunately for him, once there, he finds himself in the presence of Claudius Paquito, the popular barman of a fashionable club. The trouble is that the man is no other than one of his former employees he once fired for insolence...

Fates of multiple otherwise disconnected characters intertwine miraculously under the sky of Paris. And it all happens in one day.

Thanks to a bit of string-pulling by his aunt, Jean du Bois d'Ombelles, a young recruit who has blue blood in his veins, hopes to go through a nice and comfortable military service. Unfortunately he becomes Corporal Bourrache's pet aversion. Nevertheless, against all expectations, Jean ends up taking a liking for military life.

A sensitive teen-age boy survives the brutalities of a country training school.

Thanks to a bit of string-pulling by his aunt, Jean du Bois d'Ombelles, a young recruit who has blue blood in his veins, hopes to go through a nice and comfortable military service. Unfortunately he becomes Corporal Bourrache's pet aversion. Nevertheless, against all expectations, Jean ends up taking a liking for military life.

Due to financial problems, the boarding-school of Saint-Loup is on the verge of closing its doors. In desperation, Jacquelin, the headmaster, has the idea to invite former students to a fund-raising reunion. Among the alumni, three men whose common point is to have been in love at the time with the headmaster's niece. One is a banker, the second a priest and the last one a globetrotter. All of a sudden, the peace of the assembly is disturbed: Jacquelin's niece has just been murdered.

L'Ange rouge is a cabaret run by a former mobster with his friend, a singer and dancer he brought back from Argentina. A fleeing gangster takes refuge in the cabaret. The singer and the gangster have an affair.

In a settlement in the northern mining country. The Marles, Bréhard and Gohelle families wake up and prepare for a new day at work. The young engineer Larzac, newly appointed to the mine, will soon oppose the authoritarian and conservative methods of his superior Dubard. Georges Gohelle would like to marry Marie Bréhard, but housing difficulties thwart their plans. Brezza, a Polish immigrant, who must return to his country, would like to hate his marriage to Louise Gohelle. Roger, Marie's little brother, has just turned 14. He does not want to go down to the mine as his elders have always done. He will however have to resign himself to it. Marles evokes for him the social struggles of 1906. Roger is injured during a landslide. In front of his family and his friend Marles, who had come to the hospital, he announced his decision to continue his profession. Larzac, invited to the Marles, reveals that he refused a quiet position at the Charbonnages de Paris. He too stays.

A young noblewoman regrets having to marry the village ironmaster for money reasons, but later comes to appreciate her new husband.

Jean is a good man who has a steady job (he is a mechanic in the village garage) and a companion named Aline. But Jean is also a guzzler and a philanderer. As a result, when a local prostitute is killed in the surroundings, he becomes at once the victim of rumor...