Molière

Today's treat was watching Molière on DVD. It was billed a Shakespeare in Love in French and there are definite similarities.

Apparently Moliere disappeared from view for a period in his career and the writers imagine that during that time he had an adventure with the family of a rich merchant, including falling in love with the merchant's wife.

Molière adopts the disguise of a priest for this adventure, taking the name Tartuffe which is a clear hint as to where things are heading and elements from his adventure turn up in the play, which is of course Tartuffe, which his troupe play out at the end of the film.

It's a clever piece of work. It's such a long time since I saw Tartuffe that I confess I'd forgotten the plot but as usual Wikipedia was my friend.

The only slight catch if you're my father¹ is that you can't turn the sub-titles off but for me it was a pleasure to have nice big sub-titles, displayed in the dead band below the wide screen letterbox, to help my pitiful French along.

1. Whose French, which he's spent a lot of effort on in his retirement, is now so good that Frenchmen think he's French.