Marseille. Heaps of flowers and funeral wreaths... "A man who no longer defends his colors is no longer a man."
After a bank robbery gone wrong, a crook goes on the run across Belgium to escape the police, clear himself of a crime that he did not commit, and protect his girlfriend from a shady lawyer.
Six vignettes set in different sections of Paris, by six directors. St. Germain des Pres (Douchet), Gare du Nord (Rouch), Rue St. Denis (Pollet), and Montparnasse et Levallois (Godard) are stories of love, flirtation and prostitution; Place d'Etoile (Rohmer) concerns a haberdasher and his umbrella; and La Muette (Chabrol), a bourgeois family and earplugs.
Police officer Antoine Delille is in charge of putting an end to the activities of a "kingpin", Jo Pinelli, trafficker, racketeer and pimp. He has three women working for him, including Eva and Jeannette, and is currently "conditioning" a charming, naive Orly employee, with whom he poses as an honorable businessman. Inspector Delille's plan is to arrest Jo for some crime and, while he's being held at the P.J., to delve into his other criminal activities and confound him.
One morning in August 1944, the inhabitants of a French village are celebrating their premature liberation. The festivities are interrupted by the arrival of an exhausted, leaderless German detachment. A few kilometers away, the inhabitants of the village of Muzière negotiate with the Germans and agree to a truce. But the arrival of a Wehrmacht captain, anxious to regain control of the men, puts an end to this fragile peace process. The captain suggested meeting the Americans and surrendering to regular troops rather than civilians. The inhabitants of Muzière, believing the truce to be broken, fire on the Germans and, on this misunderstanding, the guns start talking again.
These two friendly delivery boys from a Parisian department store not only take their job to heart as much as possible, but also consider themselves responsible for the happiness of the customers they have to deliver to. This leads them successively to help, at the cost of incredible acrobatics, a young couple celebrating the first anniversary of their marriage, to mingle with the clientele of a rather disquieting doctor, to almost perish in an ambush that was of course not intended for them, and to avoid a domestic quarrel.
Charlie is a former classical pianist who has changed his name and now plays jazz in a grimy Paris bar. When Charlie's brothers, Richard and Chico, surface and ask for Charlie's help while on the run from gangsters they have scammed, he aids their escape. Soon Charlie and Lena, a waitress at the same bar, face trouble when the gangsters arrive, looking for his brothers.
The Secret Service abducts a "rocket scientist" to better protect him against gangsters acting for Chinese agents.