Around 1750, in the Dauphiné not far from the Swiss border, a cooper, tired of the injustices affecting the peasants crushed by taxes, went into revolt. Louis Mandrin, a handsome fellow without fear and without reproach, puts himself out of the law by refusing to obey the local nobility. The public authorities are tearing their hair out because the man is elusive. Helped by his faithful friends and by two women in love, Mandrin will become a legend.
The film portrays the relationship between a female Moroccan student, who has been forced to leave her studies at the Sorbonne for financial reasons and works as a dancer in a Paris nightclub, and a French naval officer. However, on returning to Casablanca she is tricked into believing that he had the led attack on her village that wiped out her family. She begins to plot her revenge.
The spahi Jean Peyral is very in love with the flirtatious Cora. When he realizes that she betrays him, he tries to kill himself. He is saved by the tenderness of a young native, Fatou.
For years now, Chief inspector Gustave Picard has been trying to bring down Salviati, the dreadful leader of a drug-selling gang. Lucienne Préville, an informer who works for him, has infiltrated the gang but her position is dangerous. On the other hand, Scoppa, Salviati's former right-hand man, has started challenging his former boss. Will Salviati, the brutal public enemy, clear off at last?
Maxime, heir to an old provincial family, is deeply in love with Maud whom he makes his fiancée. But learning that the young girl's life has not always been beyond reproach, he refuses to marry her and returns to his castle in the company of his sister who, happier than him, has met a man worthy of being in Paris. love.
In 1914, students living in a boarding house are disturbed by a young woman. On the eve of being called up, one of them declares his love for her. She abandons herself to someone who may not come back.
In the Camargue, a herdsman has just become engaged to a young local girl when his heart is troubled by a stranger who is playing the comedy of love for him. After this disappointment, he resumes the interrupted idyll.
