The Trial of Martinovics and the Hungarian Jacobins (1985)

Ignac Martinovics is one of the most controversial figures of Hungarian history. He was a clergyman and a scientist, popularly known as a man of many faces and variously described as a Jacobin deeply inspired by the French Revolution, or a stool pigeon in the pay of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Judit Elek's film is a judicial drama shot in the grim interiors of prison cells, government buildings and interrogation rooms. It details the confusing and conflicting reports about this chameleon figure and recounts the battle of wits between Schilling, an Austrian police commissioner, and the "revolutionary" Martinovics. During the course of his investigation, Schilling gradually becomes sympathetic to Martinovics and tries unsuccessfully to find a way to save him from execution, only to throw suspicion upon himself: another film about the French Revolution entwined with the politics of a contemporary moment. With the suppression of the Hungarian jacobins, like that of the German jacobins in Mainz and other large cities, the wave of French Revolutionary influence in Central Europe was effectively halted.