Molière

This was a major production for Gaumont -- 20 minutes at the currently accepted speed of the surviving print. However, Abel Gance, who had only been in the movie business for a year, was an ambitious revolutionary, intent on making film its own art form. He would do so over the next couple of decade, pushing the technical limits for special effects.... and then, over the following thirty years, come to be seen as an old stick-in-the-mud, someone for the New Wave of French Cinema to mock.... because they wanted to make their own movies, and he stood in their way.

Gance was too new to be let direct his own work at this stage -- he would not direct his first short until 1911 -- so the job was handed over to two of Gaumont's older hands (Perret and Feuillade) and Gance was given the minor but key role of Moliere as a youngster, just as he would cast himself as Saint-Just in NAPOLEON. I like to imagine he stayed around the production, arguing with the directors, or just thinking of how the movie should be shot. These old men with their outdated ideas! They should make way for younger men with better ones! Just as the writers in LES CAHIERS CINEMA wrote about him almost half a century later.