Le Havre, France, in 1949. In a town that still shows the scars of war, several friends meet up in Albert's café. One of them, Laurent, has lost his job on the docks and his marriage to Madeleine is falling apart. He knows that his wife wants to start an affair with friend, Jean Sauviot. Jean is a lonely man who is attracted to Madeleine but doesn't want to commit himself to the wife of a friend. On the day that Madeleine tells her husband that she is seeing Jean, Laurent goes looking for Jean to find an explanation. Arriving on the docks in the evening, he attacks an American sailor who looks like Jean, but the man fights back and runs away after killing Laurent accidentally. Madeleine thinks that Laurent was killed by Jean and believes that she can start a new life with her lover. The police have other ideas...

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.

Also known as Lilac, this early Anatole Litvak-directed talkie was based on a play by Tristan Bernard and Charles Henry Hirsch. The story bears traces of the Bertold Brecht-Weill piece The Threepenny Opera, with heroine Lilac (Marcelle Romeo) consorting with the criminal scum of Paris. Lilac falls in love with a handsome detective (Andre Luguet), but he doesn't let his emotions stand in the way of his duty, and in the end he reluctantly turns her over to the authorities. At $120,000, Coeur de Lilas was one of the most expensive movies to come out of France in 1931, but it more than made back its cost at the box-office.

Life story of a charming scoundrel, with little dialogue other than the star/director's witty narration. As a boy, only he survives a family tragedy when he's deprived of supper (poisonous mushrooms!) for stealing...concluding that dishonesty pays. Through years of dabbling in crime and amusing adventures, two women appear and reappear in his life, a dazzling blonde jewel thief and a stunning brunette gambler. Finally, he meets the mysterious Charbonnier who had saved his life in World War I, leading to the surprising next phase in his career...