Set during the German occupation of Paris during the Second World War, it tells the story of Lucas Steiner, a Jewish theatre director and his Gentile wife, Marion Steiner, who struggles to keep him concealed from the Nazis in their theatre cellar while she performs both his former job as the director and hers as an actress.
The film begins in North Africa where large numbers of indigènes (French Algerian Tirailleurs as well as Tunisian or Moroccan Goumiers) have been recruited into the French First Army of the Free French Forces, that has been formed to liberate France of the Nazi occupation in World War II.
When Napoleon (James Tolkan) invades Austria during the Napoleonic Wars, Boris Grushenko (Woody Allen), a coward and pacifist scholar, is forced to enlist in the Russian Army. Desperate and disappointed after hearing the news that Sonja (Diane Keaton), his cousin twice removed, is to wed a herring merchant, he inadvertently becomes a war hero. He returns and marries the recently widowed Sonja, who does not want to marry Boris, but promises him that she will when she thinks that he is about to be killed in a duel. Their marriage is filled with philosophical debates, and no money. Their life together is interrupted when Napoleon invades the Russian Empire. Boris wants to flee but his wife, angered that the invasion will interfere with their plans to start a family that year, conceives a plot to assassinate Napoleon at his headquarters in Moscow. Boris and Sonja debate the matter with some degree of philosophical double-talk, and Boris reluctantly goes along with it. They fail to kill Napoleon and Sonja escapes arrest while Boris is executed, despite being told by a vision that he will be pardoned.
The film follows Maxime Nathan and his Jewish family in France during the years leading up to World War II. François Grimbert (played as a young boy by Valentin Vigourt and as an adolescent by Mathieu Amalric) grows up in Paris in the 1950s. He is the skinny, sickly son of two marvelously athletic parents, Tania (Cécile de France) and Maxime (Patrick Bruel). For a while, he dreams of a stronger, fitter, more charismatic older brother to compensate for his own feelings of inadequacy. Only gradually does he learn of his parents' tragic past and that he has a sibling — a half-brother named Simon, his father's first son.
Arrivés en 1793, en pleine Révolution française, Godefroy de Montmirail et son écuyer Jacquouille la Fripouille rencontrent Jacquouillet, descendant de Jacquouille et accusateur public, et se retrouvent empêtrés dans la tourmente de la Terreur. Godefroy est confronté à sa descendance de l'époque, qui essaie d'échapper à la Révolution : lui et son écuyer les aident à fuir et tentent de retrouver un descendant de l'Enchanteur pour rentrer à leur époque. Les deux voyageurs temporels subissent en effet des effets secondaires inquiétants dus aux couloirs du temps non refermés.
In 1942, 10-year-old Sarah Starzynski (Mélusine Mayance) hides her younger brother from French police by locking him in a secret closet and telling him to stay there until she returns. She takes the key with her when she and her parents are transported to the Vélodrome d'Hiver, where they are held in inhuman conditions by the Paris Police and French Secret Service.
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.
Matthew (Michael Pitt) is an American exchange student who has come to Paris to study French. While at the Cinémathèque Française protesting the firing of Henri Langlois, he meets the free-spirited twins Théo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green). The three bond over a shared love of film.
The story takes place in March 1944 in a small French village. The children from the neighbouring villages of Longeverne and Velrans have been waging this merciless war as long as anyone can remember: the buttons of all the little prisoners' clothes are removed so that they head home almost naked, vanquished and humiliated. Consequently, this conflict is known as the "War of the Buttons." The village that collects the most buttons will be declared the winner. Meanwhile, Violette, a young Jewish girl, has caught the eye of Lebrac, the chief of the Longeverne kids.
In 1911, a willful and determined man from peasant stock named Charles Saganne (Gérard Depardieu) enlists in the military and is assigned to the Sahara Desert under the aristocratic Colonel Dubreuilh (Philippe Noiret). Saganne attracts the attentions of Madeleine (Sophie Marceau), the daughter of the regional administrator. In the Sahara, Saganne earns the respect of the Arabs, including Amajan, an independent warrior. After several campaigns, Saganne travels to Paris on a diplomatic mission. After having an affair with a journalist in Paris, Saganne returns to Africa, where he leads a valliant defense against Sultan Omar. He is awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, and marries Madeleine. The onset of World War I puts his success and happiness at risk.
En 1805 à Moscou, les défilés militaires, les fêtes et les bals se succèdent à la cour de Russie du Tsar Alexandre Ier de Russie, bien que les 200 000 hommes de la grande armée dominatrice de l'empereur Napoléon Ier aient envahi toute l'Europe et s'approchent chaque jour un peu plus de la capitale.
Dans la France occupée, Maurice et Joseph, deux jeunes frères juifs, sont envoyés par leurs parents dans la zone libre et font preuve de malice, de courage et d’ingéniosité pour échapper aux occupants et tenter de réunir à nouveau leur famille.
In 1792, Spain reels amid the turmoil and upheaval of the French Revolution. Francisco Goya (Stellan Skarsgård) is a renowned painter, who, among others, does portraits for the royal family as the Official Court Painter to the King and Queen.