This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher, a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery, an employee in her widowed mother's chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. On the evening before Guy is to leave for a two-year tour of combat in Algeria, he and Geneviève make love. She becomes pregnant and must choose between waiting for Guy's return or accepting an offer of marriage from a wealthy diamond merchant.

A young woman is forced into espionage so that her father can escape blackmail. The love of an aviator helps her regain her freedom and secure the arrest of the members of the network, whose leader commits suicide before the police arrive.

Seven directors each dramatize one of the seven deadly sins in a short film. In "Anger," a domestic argument over a fly in the Sunday soup escalates into nuclear war. In "Sloth," a movie star would rather pay someone to tie his shoe than bend over to do it himself, and he can't be bothered to accept a starlet's sexual favors. In "Gluttony," a peasant family on its way to the funeral of a relative who died from indigestion stops regularly to eat and drink en route, arriving in time to eat some more. In "Greed," a high-class prostitute refunds the price of a cadet's lottery ticket. In "Pride," an unfaithful wife finds reason to reform. And so on through lust and envy.

Young provincial Charles arrives in Paris to stay with his cousin Paul while studying law. Paul is a decadent, bohemian pleasure-seeker who shows the meek, diligent Charles the thrills of city life. When Charles falls for Florence, one of Paul's acquaintances, relationships begin to shift.