Produced for television by Claude-Jean Philippe, the « Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma », recounts the history of French cinema from its birth to the beginning of the 1960s. With commentary read by Jean Rochefort.

Jacques Averil leads an idle life which plunges him into weariness and melancholy. When he learns of the suicide of his father, a banker ruined by dark speculation in Icelandic minerals, he decides to take charge. An old friend of his father offers him the opportunity to join as a sailor.

Orphan Virginia is left destitute following her father's death and her uncle's alcoholism; she finds refuge with bohemians but is forced to flee, eventually finding romance and a life-altering experience that triggers surreal dreams.

On his way out of a wedding, a young boy named Peachskin finds a jewel by chance. Bringing it back to its owner, she becomes his benefactress in the years that pass.

Jean Benoît-Lévy & Jean Epstein's inventive documentary about the life of Louis Pasteur, a French chemist and one of the most important figures of medical microbiology, blends biographical drama with scientific recreations of his experiments, using Pasteur's actual instruments.

A young man falls in love with the daughter of the man who adopted him.