The Gates of Paris follows the story of a cunning criminal who plans an elaborate escape from the local police. With deception, betrayal, and double-crossing, the plot takes unexpected turns as the criminal navigates the streets of Paris and forms unlikely alliances. This slapstick comedy explores themes of love, poverty, and the complexities of human relationships. Based on the novel, the movie showcases the sardonic humor and ironic situations that arise in the charming and gritty neighborhoods of Paris.

Antoine Peyralout is baker Mouillefarine's tricycle delivery man. Comical and stuttering, Antoine shows more interest in the local soccer team than in professional integrity. A wedding cake pays the price for it and the young man is dismissed. Not dispirited in the least, Antoine decides to go to Nice, where his favorite team will play the final of the Cup. On his merry (and eventful) way, he has the opportunity to save a pretty camper, Popeline, with whom he falls in love. Once in Nice, he discovers that Dabek, the brilliant goal-keeper is not up to his task following bad news...

A well-to-do bourgeois, Tartarin lives in Tarascon, a small southern town, among friends who, like him, love hunting "à la casquette", gossip, aperitifs and thought-provoking journeys. Imaginative like all his compatriots, Tartarin ended up believing he had once been to Shanghai, so fervently did he recount his illusory adventures. It was even rumored that Tartarin was about to leave for Africa to hunt wild beasts, and this was so insistent that the brave man, urged on by his friends, was forced "for the sake of honor" to embark. He arrives in Casablanca, surprised to discover a modern city and not a single lion. But a charming Moorish woman, Baïa, seduces him, and Tartarin indulges in the "delights of Capua". This euphoria is short-lived: Baïa disappears, a false prince, mostly a swindler, finds a replacement and sets off on a hunting expedition in southern Morocco, which will only earn Tartarin the loss of his savings and a blind old lion dragged along by two beggars.

A Parisian reporter tries to exonerate a fugitive neighbor of charges he murdered his wife.

An African physician returns home after studying medicine in Paris. He marries and settles down to life in the bucolic splendor of his native land. When he has a confrontation with a white plantation owner, the white man sees red and casts a spell on the African doctor. Although he realizes the curse is an ancient tribal superstition, he still is plagued by the ghost of his late first wife. The black doctor and the white man are assimilated into cultures in which neither of them were born in this vexing jungle tale.

To improve their sex life, a married couple check themselves into a sex clinic.

Gabriel Pelletier's life is no bed of roses. Not because of his job: he is a successful sales manager. But on account of the various wrongdoings committed by his kin. First, there is his daughter Nicole, who has just developed an infatuation with a young man who is not only a revolutionary student but the the son of a Sicilian mobster as well. Then he has to cope with Bernard, his brother-in-law, a ladies'man who has been vamped by one of the sexy daughters of the Sicilian. Let's not forget Albert, his own brother, an avant-garde filmmaker also in trouble with Lombardi, the omnipresent gangster. To crown it all, Maryse, his domestic worker, is a Maoist militant!... In the end, poor Gabriel can't take it anymore. He hits the road and calls it quits.

Elisabeth is persuaded to have killed her noisy upstairs neighbor, scientist Charles Magne. To save her, Mr. Matheu, Elisabeth's father, accuses himself while Pierrot, Elisabeth's fiancé gets rid of the body in order to save father and daughter. For his part, a gangster also believes he has killed the scientist but he gets shot down by a taxidermist, who runs for life. The girl, her daddy and her boyfriend also run away. But Magne is not dead. A bum is mistaken for him and a police inspector makes everyone believe that he is the one who shot the gangster. At the end of this crazy chain of events all the protagonists are reunited at the station house and everybody dances to express their relief.

Taking the place of the police, whom he finds neither fast nor efficient enough, a journalist named Hugo sets out to find the perpetrator of a murder. Suffocating in the small town where he plies his trade, he is eager to seize the opportunity that will make him a great reporter. The discovery of a murdered young woman - a high-fashion model - puts him on the trail of diamond smugglers. Despite the cautious advice of the newspaper editor and the pleas of his wife, who senses the dangers threatening them, Hugo forges ahead, plunging headlong into the labyrinth where gangsters are luring him to disappear. He finally unmasks the murderer. He finally gets his sensational story - but through his own carelessness, another girl falls victim to the gang. At the last second, the wife he thought he'd lost through his stubborn, madly clumsy attitude is still there, ready to comfort him.

Set during World War II in France, the story begins when a resistance fighter is given shelter in an asylum by a friend who manages the institution. Soon after, the manager is arrested by the Gestapo, which gets the resistance fighter involved. He finds the informer who set his friend up and kills him. But then no one will believe his story about the informer and he becomes desperate enough to start losing his own mental balance. A young doctor and the daughter of one of the inmates help him keep it together, but he knows he cannot continue like this for long.

In the elegant nightclub of Corsican Luciano, known as Lucky, "Les Naturistes", big sums are gambled at the Longchamp races. Lucky not only "welcomes" the new dancers, he also collects the stakes entrusted to him and personally plays the horses recommended to him by Max, a former convict. But Bramati, Lucky's ex-partner, doesn't forgive Max for double-crossing him and has him shot.

Bobby earns his living in Montmartre by duping naïve provincials, along with his pal Julien, as well as crooks and drug dealers, replaced by bicarbonate. His friend Monique, who dances at Le Paradou, is frightened by such a life. A crime of which he is not guilty occurs while he is robbing drug dealer Mureau. Bobby flees, but prefers to let himself be imprisoned. A serious accident is avoided. The brave Inspector Doirel is determined to set the boy straight. Monique will do her bit too.

Thanks to the complicity of his friend Laura, Jo, sentenced to 20 years in prison, escapes from the central prison. Hiding in an old disused mill, Jo sends his young friend to a certain Freddy, gangster and nightclub owner in Pigalle, who owes his freedom to Jo's silence. But Freddy sends two of his henchmen to the mill where Jo is hiding, to kill her.

During the Indochina War, Lieutenant Perrin and his men, French soldiers, hold a remote post. They lived in harmony with the local population. Over time, they have managed to forge a peaceful relationship with the villagers. The French have built a school and a dispensary. But all their efforts are suddenly wiped out when Viet Minh resistance fighters storm their post.

A young girl, Christiane, leaves her family to join friends with whom she intends to "make a life". Two boys, Jo and Paul, look after the heroine, whose relations seem rather shady. Jo, a guide in a tourist agency specializing in nightlife in Paris, has a "shadow" of his own in the scatterbrained Annette, who is determined to marry him. While touring the capital's cabarets, Jo meets a model, Jacynthe, and her photographer, Daniel, as well as a star, Jackie, and her manager, Helios. The latter organizes a mock jewel robbery for publicity purposes, with Jackie as the victim. But contrary to expectations, the robbery takes place.

La Hurlette and Carmen are a pair of philosophical tramps who enjoy simple pleasures in the company of the cheerful Sosthène. As in the fairy tales, La Hurlette learns that he has just inherited a tidy fortune, provided he can find a job. By dint of hard work, he manages to do so, and a banquet brings together his disinherited friends. Determined to live the high life, La Hurlette and Carmen lose all their inheritance at the Cabourg casino, and end up as philosophical as ever on their favorite bench.

Sweet Virgil believes himself to be a victim of the same bad luck that has pursued parents, grandparents and ancestors before him. Terribly complexed by this misfortune, he nevertheless awkwardly tries his hand at journalism, supported by a charming editor. By chance, he comes face to face with the thundering gangster Esposito. In this cat-and-mouse struggle, the mouse wins. Esposito is arrested and Virgil is rid of his inhibitions forever.

The war will separate the members of the Valon family, two sons Alexandre and Antoine being prisoners, while the youngest Gilbert enters the secret army. Only their sister, Denise, will stay on the farm with her grandfather and grandmother. The Germans invade the free zone.

In Saigon, the heads of the French counter-espionage network replace the secretary of dangerous traffickers with one of their agents to uncover a trade in bacteriological bombs.

Elvire, Nathalie and Christine, three young ladies with a proven track record, are called in by the Secret Service to retrieve coveted papers concerning a new explosive. Introduced to a fearsome environment thanks to a female helper, they face kidnappings, play a double game, toil endlessly, lend helicopters and finally triumph, smiling, after a breathtaking fight.