Early in Mnouchkine's film on Molière, in a harrowing scene, a group of doctors bleed the young boy's mother to death. They throw the blood out into the courtyard before returning to the house to gluttonously gnaw on dripping red meat for their lunch. The kindly grandfather gets Jean-Baptiste out of this house of death, taking him down the street to see a makeshift stage set up in a cobblestone square. On the stage is an old man, reminiscent of Pantalone in Commedia, doddering about with a long white beard, making important harrumphing sounds as he talks to himself and goes about his business. Also on stage is an actor dressed as a skeleton with a grinning skull mask. The old man does basic human things like squatting on a chamber pot, while the skeleton shrieks with laughter and jumps about the stage with joy. He points at the old man, and then at the public. The moral is clear: you may think you are a Very Important Person but Death will get you in the end! The scene gave ecstatic experience to the actor playing the skeleton and it amused the public. Pantalone was upset but he's an old man and so who cares. He's the straight man. And he is the obstacle to fun. So the “fourbe” will win – even if, in this case, the fourbe is not Scapin, but a hard-masked type called “Death.”