France, July 1782. During her birthday, the beautiful young Marchioness Caroline meets the attractive soldier Gaston. It's love at first sight but Gaston does not wish to make a commitment because a military career waits for him. Caroline marries then a politician but the French Revolution bursts and Caroline has to run away to escape the guillotine. By running away she meets Gaston again who decides to help her.
Inspiré de faits réels. L'histoire parcourt l'Algérie des années 1930 aux années 1960, racontant le destin de Younes, jeune Algérien élevé comme un pied-noir par son oncle. Il traverse les tragédies vécues par son pays, dont l'attaque de Mers el-Kébir et la guerre d'Algérie, sur un fond d'histoire d'amour impossible.
Le film se déroule en juillet 1961, durant la Guerre d'Algérie (Jacques Davila est natif d'Oran). Pierre, un jeune homme qui fait ses études à Paris, vient passer ses vacances en Algérie, chez sa mère Hélène (Micheline Presle). Celle-ci vit à la campagne avec son ami Jean. À l'occasion d'une fête, Pierre revoit sa petite amie (en passe de le quitter) et une partie des personnes de son passé. À rien de tout cela il ne semble vraiment attaché.
In the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart on 22 August 1962, an assassination attempt is made on the President of France General Charles de Gaulle by the militant French underground organisation OAS in anger over the French government granting independence to Algeria. As the president's motorcade passes, de Gaulle's unarmoured Citroën DS car is raked with machine gun fire, but the entire entourage escapes without injury. Within six months, OAS leader Jean Bastien-Thiry and several other members of the plot are captured and Bastien-Thiry is executed.
On le sait, les stars de la chanson française, en général, n'ont pas été trop intimidées - ni inquiétées - par l'occupant allemand. Certaines, d'ailleurs, se sont empressées de séduire les oreilles pétainistes et nazies. Fallait-il, ou non, continuer à chanter? Cette activité pouvait-elle passer pour une forme de collaboration? A questions dérangeantes, réponses ambiguës! Quoi qu'il en soit, et comme le montre ce film, les années sombres ont été plutôt fertiles pour la chanson française.
À quelques jours de la fin de la guerre d'Indochine, un commando de treize parachutistes, avec à sa tête le lieutenant Brissac, est largué sur le village vietnamien de Quinh Quang où une infirmière — Catherine Fournier — est retenue prisonnière. Ils la délivrent et font retraite vers leur base — à vingt jours de marche de là — après avoir détruit le village et tué ses habitants. La nuit suivante, un des paras est abattu.
In 1942, a young Scot, Charlotte Gray, travels to London to take a job in a surgery. On the train, a man enters her compartment and chats with her, asking questions about her life and expressing interest that she is fluent in French. He gives her his card with the date, time and address of a book launch. Social life in London is in full swing and her friends convince her to go. She soon meets RAF Flight Lieutenant Peter Gregory, but is interrupted by Richard Cannerley, the older man from the train, who urges her to meet some of his acquaintances and asks her to contact him when she leaves.
En 1959, deux frères sont séparés par la guerre d'Algérie. Le frère aîné doit partir se battre, et raconte l'horreur au quotidien à son petit frère de 10 ans.
The film begins with an adult woman named France, walking down a road toward Douala, Cameroon. While walking, she is picked up by William J. Park (Emmet Judson Williamson), an African American who has moved to Africa and is driving to Limbe with his son. As they ride, France's mind drifts and we see her as a young girl in Northern French Cameroon where her father was a colonial administrator. The story is conducted through the eyes of young France, showing her friendship with the "houseboy", Protée, as well the sexual tension between him and her young and beautiful mother, Aimée. The conflict of the film comes from the discomfort created as France and her mother attempt to move past the established boundaries between themselves and the native Africans. This is brought to a head through Luc Segalen (Jean-Claude Adelin), a Western drifter who stays with the Dalens family after a small aircraft crashes nearby. He makes public the evident sexual attraction between Aimée and Protée, prompting the mother to act on her desire. This results in a fight between Luc and Protée, who consequently loses his in-house job and is moved to work outdoors in the garage as a mechanic.
In 1793, during the French Revolution, a young woman named Céline (Sophie Marceau), who was adopted by Count Savinien de Kerfadec, must choose between two men who have been raised like her brothers, Tarquin Larmor (Lambert Wilson) and Aurèle de Kerfadec (Stéphane Freiss), while they take opposite sides in the conflict. Tarquin, also adopted by the Count, is a partisan of the New Republic and defends the new political system; Aurèle, the Count's natural son, supports the Royalist side. Both sons are in love with Céline. After the Republican Army decimates Western France, an insurgence of peasants, clergy, and aristocrats loyal to the Royalists stage a counterrevolution.
Two sets of identical twins, played by Wilder and Sutherland, are accidentally switched at birth. One set, Phillipe and Pierre DeSisi, is aristocratic and haughty, while the other set, Charles and Claude Coupé, is poor and dim-witted. On the eve of the French Revolution, both sets find themselves entangled in palace intrigues.