Released in France as La Kermesse Heroique, Carnival in Flanders is set during the long-ago war between the Dutch and Spanish. A tiny village in Flanders is invaded by Spanish troops. The townsfolk have heard of Spanish cruelties in other towns, and decide to deflect the vanquishers by playing dead. This isn't terribly effective (you have to take a breath once in a while), so the wife of the burgomaster tries to soften up the invaders with a lavish carnival. So successful is this venture that the Spaniards allow the village to escape being decimated, or even taxed. An award-winner many times over, Carnival in Flanders was banned in Germany; evidently, Goebbels caught on that director Jacques Feyder and scenarists Bernard Zimmer and Charles Spaak were drawing deliberate parallels between the Spanish and the then-burgeoning Nazis.

Opera singer Enrico Ferraro, tired of his too many engagements, jumps off the train escaping from his manager and changes to another going to the Riviera. He makes a friend and stops at a village, where (it seems) he can at last have some well deserved holidays, with the added interest of meeting a beautiful girl in the surroundings.

一个迷人的恶棍的人生故事，除了明星/导演的诙谐叙述外，几乎没有对话。作为一个男孩，只有他在一场家庭悲剧中幸存下来，当时他因为偷窃而被剥夺了晚餐（毒蘑菇！结论是不诚实是有回报的。通过多年的涉足犯罪和有趣的冒险，两个女人在他的生活中出现和重新出现，一个令人眼花缭乱的金发珠宝窃贼和一个令人惊叹的黑发赌徒。最后，他遇到了在第一次世界大战中救了他一命的神秘 Charbonnier，从而开启了他职业生涯中令人惊讶的下一阶段......