Great filmmakers claim the artistic influence of French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907-1977), a master of suspense, with a unique vision of the world, who knew how to offer both great shows and subtle studies of characters. Beyond the myth of the tyrannical director, a contrasting portrait of a visionary, an agitator, an artist against the system.
A Nordic fishermen's village surrounded by the raging sea. This is were fisherman Haldor (Wilhelm Borchert) is living. His marriage with the proud Salvör (Heidemarie Hatheyer) is going to be impend. While on the sea in a storm, he is being cast upon an island. There he falls in love with the farmer's girl Maria (Ingrid Andree). When Haldor learns, that Maria is pregnant, he takes her with him back home. Salvör who was still waiting, hates him for that and marries a rich merchant. Twenty years later Haldor's daughter Gunna and Salvör's son Ragnar, are falling in love with each other. And only now Haldor learns from Salvör that Ragnar is his son.
Bastien and Furet are a journalist and a photographer working together as a team on the newspaper 'L'Echo du Jour'. Just as they are about to go off on a weekend break with Micky, their boss's secretary, they are sent to a crime scene to report the murder of a Russian named 'le Moujik'.
Noël Bienvenu, owner of a career, is a widower and lives with his parents. His son Bastien, whom he despises, was sentenced to six months in prison for theft. Noël goes to see a dying friend, Romieux, who asks him to take care of his daughter Marthe, who has settled in Paris (Batignolles district). Noël goes there and discovers that Marthe is destitute (her lover Gaston being an incarcerated mobster): he then offers her to come and live with him and soon, marries her.
A struggling artist buys a talisman that gives him love, fame and wealth. The talisman is a severed left hand, and it works perfectly, in fact, magically. But of course there is nothing free in this world, and after one year the devil comes and asks for his due.
Guy Carbonnel, a rich industrialist, has more eyes for rugby than for his wife Hélène. René Rivals, his long-time pal, takes advantage of it to court her but Guy is becoming suspicious so René has to find a way to deflect his friend's suspicion. He finally has an idea: he asks Lilian, a circus acrobat, to pose as his mistress. Lilian accepts and they embark on a series of eventful moments.
Paris, France. Commissaire Wens follows the lead of a ruthless murderer to an unexpected place.
Loursat, a lawyer, lives with his daughter Nicole in a sinister and vast bourgeois residence. Abandoned for nearly twenty years by his wife, the brilliant lawyer has sunk into alcoholism and his relationship with his daughter is virtually non-existent. However, one day the corpse of a stranger is discovered in the residence of Loursat. Nicole, who frequents a gang of young people who escape boredom by stealing cars and other objects, is immediately suspected.
Are these two tramps who come to pose for an advertising agency at Patrice Farfadou, the fashionable photographer, the Prince Andromache of Miremir and his faithful secretary Palmer? Who will find the key to the Enigma: The melancholic Hector, the youthful Geneviève, or the feverish Elyane?