This witty and sumptuous approach to the French Revolution takes as its focal point one crucial night in 1791, when Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette fled Paris for the border, only to be taken prisoner by the towns- people in Varennes. However, it is not the King's coach that captures the imagination of Italian director Ettore Scola, but one following close behind it, carrying a host of historical and fictional characters, each pursuing the royal coach for his or her own purposes. In the course of the journey, they come to realize that what they are witnessing is not just the flight or even the demise of one richly pantalooned royal body, but the beginning of a new era. The players in this 18th century Stagecoach include an aging Casanova (Marcello Mastroianni), his spirit haunted by the reputation that precedes him; the plebian writer Restif (Jean-Louis Barrault), a “Rousseau of the gutter,” the “chambermaid's Voltaire”; and Citizen Tom Paine (Harvey Keitel), come to watch and cheer on the revolution. These rueful and roguish intellectuals espouse their views on sex and democracy to, among others, a countess and devotee of the soon-to-be-beheaded royal couple (Hanna Schygulla) and an Italian opera singer (Laura Betti). This is the star-studded cast, but a highlight of Scola's epic is equally its telling panorama of French culture, peasants and royalty, marketplaces and brothels, inns and mansions.