Molière

Comparable to Rossellini's history films (not only because Descartes and Louis XIV both makes appearances here), although a bit livelier and less dryly didactic. It moves fairly quickly for a film that's four hours long, although I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it started to feel it's length going into the third hour. If I didn't know, I would have never guessed that this inspired Hal Hartley when he wrote The Unbelievable Truth, there's really no similarity to Hartley's style unfortunately.