An old Montmartre building with countless tenants: on the seventh floor, a Russian painter, Igor, lives in his art and dreams, whose paintings express kindness and indulgence; two floors below, a poor cabaret singer, Seraphita, poses for her neighbor when she feels too lonely and abandoned; further down, the Prunelle family lives, where the father and mother, inveterate drunks, indulge in drink and give their eleven-year-old son. Tique, who seems to have become indifferent, the spectacle of atrocious domestic scenes. By the time the film begins, Father Prunelle, drunker than ever, has chased Tique's mother away with insults...

The war will separate the members of the Valon family, two sons Alexandre and Antoine being prisoners, while the youngest Gilbert enters the secret army. Only their sister, Denise, will stay on the farm with her grandfather and grandmother. The Germans invade the free zone.

Maurice Vallier, nicknamed "Ma Pomme"(which means "myself" in slang), is a cheerful man, well aware that money does not make happiness and who, of all things, prices freedom. Which is why he has become a tramp and he has never regretted his choice of life. Things go smoothly until the day he inherits a huge amount of money. He first refuses it but changes his mind when he realizes that thanks to the inheritance he can help others. Even more enticing is the fact that he must share the big money with a charming air hostess. However once he deems he has done enough good he gives up the money left and resumes his old lifestyle singing along "Ma pomme c'est moi, j'suis plus heureux qu'un roi..."

Suppose lost and found objects could talk... But they can! At least four of them... : -A statuette of Osiris remembers how two ex-lovers, a model and a good for nothing who claimed to be an Egyptologist, met again one Christmas Eve. -A violin has things to say about Raoul, a humble policeman who lost Solange, a widowed grocer he loved, to a god-dam seducing busker also named Raoul. -A scarf was witness to an eerie romance between a young madman and girl he had saved from suicide. -A funeral wreath lets us know how it caused a young woman to believe her lover dead. After having told their respective story, the objects return to their customary stillness.

During the Great War, in Austria, an officer was shot on the orders of his superior von Pennwitz. Out of revenge, his widow becomes a spy in the pay of France, preoccupied with removing the person responsible for her husband's death. In charge of a mission to von Pennwitz, she suddenly finds herself face to face with her husband, who is still alive. It was a ruse of war to deceive the enemy. It is only at the armistice that the couple will be able to live in peace.