Those viewers who delighted in Ariane Mnouchkine's Moli?re (PFA) know of her electrifying Th?tre du Soleil--and may have been waiting for a chance to see their epic historical play 1789, which was staged at a former munitions factory on the outskirts of Paris in the early seventies. This film is that chance; shot during the last thirteen performances of the stage production, it is both a lively play-within-a-film and a memoir of the collective theater company as it existed almost two decades ago. Film criti Sheila Benson raved in the Los Angeles Times, "The play's episodes, tableaux, mimes, circuses and waves of emotion view the French Revolution from its underside, through the eyes of the wretched and impoverished citizenry. Part Brecht, part Bunraku puppets, in part startlingly original, the action swirls ceaselessly...The saga of the taking of the Bastille is told by actors stationed in a dozen places throughout the huge theater-room, each with a staccato 'report' of the actual incidents during the struggle...And in the joyous explosion that follows, the same actors juggle with fire, ride unicycles and do acrobatics. There is irony, great intelligence, brilliance and a kind of exhausting exuberance to this performance."