This is rural France. It's the summer of 1943, the weather is fine and sunny and life is sweet. On one of these beautiful days, Nanette, a fourteen-year-old peasant girl, meets a slightly injured young man near the farm she lives on. Her life is about to change forever.
Auguste Maroilleur, an elderly farmer, exploits 400 hectares of crop land with the help of his family, over which he rules with an iron hand. Things go awry the day he discovers one of his grandsons is involved in drug traffic. To make matters worse, the reckless youth has hidden the white powder in the Maroilleur farm. Without a moment's hesitation, Auguste gets rid of the toxic substance but, of course, the mob has different views...
Ginette Chaluzac, who has left Central France for Paris, now works as a seamstress in a modest workshop in the Marais district. Her life is quiet and uneventful until the day when, to her surprise, she receives a letter containing a hundred-franc banknote. The sender, who remains anonymous, renews his gift day after day and Ginette grows accustomed to the situation. Her material situation improves but after a while she starts asking herself questions about the one who sends her the money and his/her intentions. Till obsession. To make it clear in her mind she eventually decides to investigate...
This play by Henry de Montherland, takes place in 1517 and depicts the Cardinal de Cisneros, an authoritarian man approaching his end, regent of the throne of Spain oscillating between his desire for power and his tendency to inaction. Thinking himself invulnerable, he awaits the arrival of young Charles on the throne, but his beliefs will be shaken.
This modest, unpretentious French film is a streamlined version of the true story previously cinematized as The Song of Bernadette (1943). Daniele Ajort plays the simple 19th-century French peasant girl who insists that she has experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary. Once this sighting becomes common knowledge, Bernadette's very existence becomes a religious and political hot potato. Thousands of people flock to the grotto at Lourdes where Bernadette claims she has seen the Holy Mother, believing that the waters therein contain recuperative powers. Bernadette dies under a cloud of controversy, but is ultimately elevated to sainthood by the Vatican.