Viviane Romance

A young woman from the countryside travels to Paris to become an actress. Despite all kinds of difficulties, affronts and emotional adventures, she succeeded in gaining a place in the world of entertainment and becomes a great movie star.

Charles, fresh out of jail, rejects his wife's plan for a quiet life of bourgeois respectability. He enlists a former cell mate, Francis, to assist him in pulling off one final score, a carefully planned assault on the vault of a Cannes casino.

A compilation of segments covers the seven deadly sins of greed, wrath, envy, pride, lust, sloth, and gluttony.

Pierre Gilieth has committed a murder in Paris. He flees to Barcelona, where he runs out of money. So he joins the Spanish Foreign Legion. He meets there two fellow countrymen, Mulot and Lucas. He tries to forget his fault... but Lucas's friendship soon appears to be less unselfish...

Proud, eccentric, and antisocial, Monsieur Hire has always kept to himself. But after a woman turns up dead in the Paris suburb where he lives, he feels drawn to a pretty young newcomer to town and discovers that his neighbors are only too ready to suspect the worst of him.

Two women love the same man in a world of few prospects. In Budapest, Liliom is a "public figure," a rascal who's a carousel barker, loved by the experienced merry-go-round owner and by a young, innocent maid. The maid, Julie, loses her job after going out with Liliom; he's fired by his jealous employer for going out with Julie. The two lovers move in with Julie's aunt; unemployment emasculates him and a local weasel tempts him with crime. Julie, now wan, is true to Liliom even in his bad temper. Meanwhile, a stolid widower, a carpenter, wants to marry Julie. Is there any future on this earth for Julie and Liliom, whose love is passionate rather than ideal?

Cashier Maurice Legrand is married to the wretched Adele. By chance, he meets Lucienne, 'Lulu', and makes her his mistress. He thinks he has finally found love, but Lulu is a streetwalker, still in love with her pimp.

Duparquet is the controller of Les Halles, and plays matchmaker between the young farm-girl Ciboulette and Antonin, a young spoiled aristocrat.

Nada, named after a gang of Spanish anarchists, is a small, confused band of French terrorists. They kidnap the American ambassador after one of his regular visits to an exclusive brothel. The gang starts to quarrel amongst themselves as to the diplomat's fate, while the police purge suspects in their attempts to destroy the Nada faction. As the violence escalates on both sides, the States and the terrorists are forced to use one another's methods in an increasingly desperate and relentless conflict.

He was nicknamed Gueule d'ange (Angel's Face) because of his good looks, which enabled him to make a certain amount of money from wealthy ladies. Having given up on touching little Marie, he fell into the clutches of fashionable decorator Loina. Both love money, both go for it. Their characters bind them together. So much so that when Loina falls on hard times, Gueule d'ange would fly to help her. A loyal friend stops him. Loina leaves. Distraught, the handsome boy looks inward. It's time for him to settle down.

Drama in a small German water town where various characters clash against a backdrop of money, gambling and love.

Outwardly, Monsieur Victor would appear to be the model citizen. A respectable Toulon shopkeeper, he has a devoted wife and is courteous and considerate to all who know him. However, beneath this veneer of respectability hides a notorious receiver of stolen goods, who trades with hardened criminals. Victor manages to keep up his double life without any difficulty until the fateful day when one of his partners in crime threatens to expose him. Fearing a scandal, Victor kills the crook in a moment of panic, using a shoemaker's tool. Naturally, the murder is blamed on a local shoemaker, who is sentenced to ten years' hard labour. Seven years later, the former shoemaker reappears in Toulon, having escaped from prison. The first person to recognise him is Monsieur Victor...

Madame de Montespan, the Maîtresse-en-titre of Louis XIV, has been in disgrace since the King set eyes on a younger beauty, Marie-Angélique Scorailles. Having had enough of the situation, the rejected mistress decides to visit La Voisin, a woman known as a fortune teller, a doctor, a midwife and who is also said to arrange black masses and sell poisons. Some time later Marie-Angélique, now Duchess of Fontanges, dies mysteriously aged only twenty...

The adventurer Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, descendant (by the left hand) of the king of France Henri II, and who claims to be "Countess de la Motte", imagines a tortuous plan to steal a magnificent diamond necklace that the queen Marie-Antoinette refused to buy from the jewelers Boehmer and Bassange.

Captain Benoît manages to take possession of the plans of a new German airplane. The German counter-espionage assigns one of their agents, beautiful Erna Fiedler, to seduce Benoît and to eliminate him. But the two spies fall in love.

Paris, 1865. In a music-hall Manon accidentally kills her partner who was trying take sexual advantage of her. She is condemned to twenty years of hard labor first and then to be deported to marry a released convict. On the ship where she sails with her female fellow-sufferers she gets to know a young doctor and helps to suppress a revolt. Once arrived at her destination, Manon hesitates between her official fiancé and the doctor whose household she does not want to break...

Paris, 1956. Three sisters, three actresses willing to do almost anything to make it big. Their lives, their loves, their dramas. A savory satire of the world of show business and cinema in particular.

A religious fanatic finds his entire life and philosophy turned upside-down as he falls in love with a girl and kills her in a jealous rage. His search is for peace of mind and a desire to justify the murder of the girl to himself. His mind becomes distraught as he gropes trying to rationalize his deed and his world falls apart around him. A police inspector patiently and tirelessly stays on Barrault's trail, without putting him under arrest, though convinced he is the murderer, and waiting for the moment when he feels Barrault will break under the strain of his own religious fanaticism.

Jacques de Chardin, runner of women, marries a rich and young American, Mary-Ann. He does not give up, however, his conquests and has an affair with Chouquette. His wife and her friend, Baron Sigismond, decide to fake an affair in order to get revenge.

The Marquis de Barfleur, an unattractive man, decides to resort to plastic surgery to ensure the fidelity of Colette, his young mistress. Now endowed with a face to die for, he is about to achieve his goal. But the Marchioness de Barfleur, the Marquis' loving wife, does not hear it that way. She has her revenge claiming everywhere that her husband is... dead! An assertion people believe since they do not recognize the Marquis! When her vengeance has lasted long enough, she forgives the Marquis and husband and wife fall into each other's arms.

A French novelist passes off an African shepherdess as a princess.

Sylvain, sentenced to death, assures the visiting priest that his life could have been completely different, and invents different situations.

Town trollop Safia, much against her better judgment, falls in love with Matteo, a beggar and mystic in the native quarter of Sirocco. She flees to France, first as the mistress and then wife of a wealthy archaeologist, and bears him Matteo's child, whom he believes to be his own. Complications arise years later when Matteo finds Safia, and a ring of blackmailers uncover her past and exposes her to her husband.

Le Grand Échiquier is a French variety television program created and presented by Jacques Chancel. It aired at 8:30 pm on the first channel of the ORTF from January 12, 1972 to July 12, 1972, then on the second color channel of the ORTF from September 1972 to December 1974, and finally on Antenne 2 from January 1975 to December 21, 1989. The program returned to France 2 on December 20, 2018 and is hosted by Anne-Sophie Lapix.