With 120 actors, 600 participants, 1300 costumes, 220 sets and after two years of work, Ariane Mnouchkine’s iconic movie tells in four hours the fascinating story of Molière, and of his century. From his childhood to his death, we follow Molière and his travelling companions, in their joy, misery and glory throughout a savage yet refined XVIIth century France, sharing their first theatrical adventures, their successes and their failures. This familiar and spectacular saga where the devout clash with the libertine, peasents with courtesans, is about the life of an honest man who exhausts himself in an unceasing struggle to practice his art in a century filled with repression and violent hypocrisy. Brilliant, funny, dramatic, it is an absolute classic of French cinema.