We report an experimental investigation of the permeability to gas of systems of one or several soap films freely standing in a straight tube, using either reactive gas (NH(3)) or inert gas (argon). The series of soap films appears to be the simplest paradigm of successive lamellae arrangements encountered in foams confined in a porous medium. To conduct the experiments, we devised two novel methods for the determination of gas diffusion fluxes: one based on reactive changes of pH by NH(3) and the other on mass spectrometry. The permeability of a single film, stabilized by sodium dodecyl sulfate solution, was found to be 3.50+/-0.04 10(-2) cm/s for argon and 3.18+/-0.07 10(-4) cm/s for NH(3). The permeability value for the inert gas is in good agreement with data obtained by the diminishing-bubble method. When the number of films increases, the permeability decreases considerably as a result of cumulative film resistance effects. We also developed a simple phenomenological model based upon a combination of gas kinetic and energy barrier concepts to interpret our data. This model takes into account gas solubility and the effects of salinity, which have seemingly been ignored in previous models. The predicted film permeability decreases sharply with increase surfactant concentration, indicating the occurrence of higher adsorption and increasingly compact surfactant layers.