Chapter 34 - Who and What Is Molière? The Film Directors’ Perspective

Summary

The identity of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin has challenged biographers from his own times to today. The diverse portrayal of Molière in the cinematic and televisual biographies reflects the challenges faced by scholars who have sought to interrogate and often fill in the gaps left by the absence of manuscripts and documents in Molière’s own hand. Early film biographies (particularly those by Léonce Perret (1909) and Jacques de Féraudy (1922)) gave an exemplary depiction of Molière as an actor/dramatist. The eulogistic tradition was undermined by Mnouchkine in 1978 in her collectivist view of Molière. The demythologising of the death of the dramatist by Robert Wilson in 1994 continues the subversion of legends accumulated during Molière’s time and through the afterlife industry. New mythologies have arisen through the big budget exploration in 2007 by Laurence Tirard of the period between Molière’s release from prison and his flight to the provinces: a period of biographical silence, but one that Tirard attempts to break with an imagined love affair that provides Molière with the inspiration for future characters and scenarios. A television film in 2009 fictionalising the current debate regarding authorship illustrates the trajectory in filmic biography of the deconstruction of a national icon.