Molière

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin loses his mother young and grows up with his father and grandfather. For a while he does his father's trade, studies law, then joins a theatre company and plays in the provinces for years. When he returns to Paris he gains the support first of part of the court and then of the king. The plays he writes as Molière also make him a target of the church. Ariane Mnouchkine's film runs over four hours and was shot over two years with the Théâtre du Soleil company. Philippe Caubère takes the lead. Mnouchkine is a woman of the theatre, and the film is about how a company works: the stage, the road, the shortage of money and living together. It screened at Cannes in 1978. The telling puts a group of people rather than a single genius at the centre.