Based on the popular stage play by Georges Courteline. The film is set in 1885. It focuses on a group of troops, a mix of regulars and reservists, and their different responses to the daily military routines. A crisis emerges when a General pays a visit while two deserters are still absent.
Auguste, a somewhat simple-minded Provençal fisherman, loves and admires Mireille. This concerns only Maurice, son of an important wholesaler, whom scruples do not stifle.
Now Gisèle Bourjeon is the mistress of the count Hubert Martin de Kardec.After a long journey abroad Henri Lévrier, a champagne producer has come back and meets again his friends Hubert and the Bourjeon family.
The reservist Lafleur, having a wife, a mistress and still running after the first petticoat that comes along, his namesake, an active soldier, finds himself embroiled in the vengeance or intrigues that all these women are plotting.
Hercule, a young peasant, inherits a Parisian newspaper with a large circulation. The editor-in-chief, Vasco, takes advantage of his ignorance to make corruption prevail.
Two friends, Tricoche and Cacolet, are partners in a detective agency. Chance has it that Cacolet is hired by Van der Pouf, a rich banker who wants him to watch over his wife Bernardine while the latter, on her part, seeks the services of Thicoche.
Following a broadcast on the radio, each of the listeners remembers these "little nothings" (the title is borrowed from a play by Mozart), which have often changed their lives.
A group of drinking, smoking and card-playing society women are getting obesely flabby. They go to a gym where various methods are used to reduce their fat.
Old fashioned opera adaptation: A feisty and free spirited woman of the Tyrol withdraws to a mountain peak when she is separated from the man she loves.
Guests at a luxury hotel are horrified when they witness a man literally "disappear into thin air." The vanished man's relatives hire a detective, who goes to the hotel to investigate the disappearance.
A pretty young lawyer discovers that her father needs an expensive operation to save his life. She goes to a nearby city and takes out an ad offering to marry whoever will pay her $5000, the cost of the operation.