In occupied Paris, the young unemployed Algerian, Younes Ben Daoud, makes a living on the black market. He is arrested by the police, and to avoid prison he agrees to spy on the Paris Mosque. The police suspect that the mosque leadership, including its rector Si Kaddour Benghabrit, is helping resistance fighters and protecting North African Jews by giving them Muslim birth certificates.
The scenario of the film as originally written by Gance was published in 1927 by Librairie Plon. Much of the scenario describes scenes that were rejected during initial editing, and do not appear in any known version of the film. The following plot includes only those scenes that are known to have been included in some version of the film. Not every scene described below can be viewed today.
It is June 1940, during the Battle of France. After five-year-old Paulette's parents and pet dog die in a German air attack on a column of refugees fleeing Paris, the traumatized child meets 10-year-old Michel Dollé whose peasant family takes her in. She quickly becomes attached to Michel. The two attempt to cope with the death and destruction that surrounds them by secretly building a small cemetery among the ruins of an abandoned watermill, where they bury her dog and start to bury other animals, marking their graves with crosses stolen from a local graveyard, including one belonging to Michel's brother. Michel's father first suspects that Michel's brother's cross was stolen from the graveyard by his neighbour. Eventually, the father finds out that Michel has stolen the cross.
Soon after the Great War, Major Foster (Hackman), the commander of a detachment of the French Foreign Legion, suffers the haunting memories of leading an army of 8,000, now reduced to 200. He has become an alcoholic as a result, and his only friend is his faithful Sergeant, Triand (Rufus Narcy).
The late 1920s. Wealthy La Bessière (Adolphe Menjou) tries to strike up an acquaintance with disillusioned nightclub singer Amy Jolly (Marlene Dietrich) on a ship bound for the French protectorate in Morocco. Though polite, she later tears up and tosses away his calling card. They meet again at the nightclub where she is the headliner.
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy join the French Foreign Legion after Ollie's sweetheart Jeanie-Weenie (only ever seen as a photograph) rejects him, as it is the only place where Ollie can forget her. When they arrive at the barracks in French Algeria, they discover that not only are the other soldiers trying to forget lost loves, their lost loves all happen to be the one and the same woman Ollie is trying to forget: Jeanie-Weenie!
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.
Trappist monk Boris Androvski (Charles Boyer) feels enormous pressure at having to keep his vows as a monk, so he flees his monastery. Yet he is the only one who knows the secret recipe of the monastery's famous liqueur, a recipe passed down from one generation of monks to another. Meanwhile, heiress Domini Enfilden (Marlene Dietrich) is newly freed from her own prison of caring for her just-deceased father and also seeks the exotic open spaces of the North African desert to nurture her soul.
Victor (Ronald Colman) has taken the blame for his younger brother's crime and joins the French Foreign Legion to escape his past, taking with him his valet, Rake (Herbert Mundin). His commander is the ruthless Major Doyle (Victor McLaglen), who becomes jealous when Cigarette (Claudette Colbert), a cafe singer, sets her sights on Victor. He, however, is more interested in a refined Englishwoman, Lady Venetia (Rosalind Russell), and he eventually dumps Cigarette for her. Then, Doyle sends Victor off on a suicidal mission to get rid of his rival.
Paul Hudson, qui mène un groupe de bandits dans le désert contre plusieurs nazis, veut les utiliser comme employés pour son entreprise de chemin de fer.
Ce film retrace la résistance des cheminots français pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale et leurs efforts (sabotage des trains et des voies) pour perturber la circulation des trains pendant l'occupation nazie.
A female secret agent is sent to French North Africa posing as a night club singer to investigate the massacre of a French Foreign Legion outpost. She discovers a treacherous leader planning an attack on strategic oil fields.
In 1940, France is at war with Germany. The French have removed large numbers of troops from their African possessions, leaving the way open for revolt. American soldier of fortune Mike Conway (Victor Mature) sees a chance to pay his way back to the United States by gunrunning to hostile Tuaregs.
While on holiday in Paris, Ollie falls so much in love with Georgette, the beautiful daughter of an innkeeper, he intends to marry her. Unfortunately, she turns down his marriage proposal because there is someone else, "very much so". (Unbeknownst to him at the moment, a Foreign Legion officer named Francois is her husband, and has returned briefly to see her.) Ollie is heartbroken to the point of committing suicide. Just as he about to jump into a river (with Stan joining him), Francois, happening to catch sight of them about to do so, convinces the duo to enlist in the Foreign Legion in order to forget Ollie's failed romance. When Stan asks him how long it will take Ollie to forget, should they join the Foreign Legion, Francois points out it will only take a matter of a few days. Enticed by Francois's offer, plus the fact that Ollie will completely forget his failed romance very shortly, they enlist.
Sergeant Brock (Gene Barry) and Goldie (Nat King Cole) are American Korean War veterans now serving as French Foreign Legion mercenaries in the First Indochina War. Angie Dickinson plays Brock's wife, a "half caste" Chinese Eurasian named "Lucky Legs" who resorts to smuggling to feed her five-year-old son she had with Brock. Brock abandoned her and the child when it was born with Asian features, feeling a "half breed" would not be welcome in America; an attitude towards miscegenation prevalent (in some quarters) at the time. Lucky is recruited by the French high command to use her knowledge to guide a demolition squad of Legionnaires led by Brock to blow up a hidden Viet Minh ammunition dump on the border with Red China. In return for her services, Lucky is promised by the French that they will arrange for her son's evacuation to America.