In its view of cynical, manipulative leaders, and the masses who make themselves worthy of disdain, Danton is reflective of its source, Georg Bãhner's 1835 play Danton's Death. And it is, interestingly, a portrait of the French Revolution directed by a recent emigr?from the Russian Revolution, Dimitri Buchowetzki. Emil Jannings' Danton is lusty, expansive and charismatic, a hedonist hiding behind the visage of a man of the people; ultimately contemptuous of his loyal followers, he finds in the revolution's olitical achievements a confirmation of his penchant for anarchic individualism and soon retreats to the life of a bon-vivant. Werner Krauss's Robespierre is puritanical by contrast, a stern father who will protect his children even at the cost of their own well being. The people themselves are at once childlike and bestial in their adherence to two paternalistic leaders and brutal in their demands for revolutionary justice. The voices of reconciliation are all too obviously doomed to silence. Even contemporary reviews noted that the portrait of the masses in this quasi-expressionist work was more reflective of political currents in the Weimar Republic than of the era depicted, and Marc Silberman (University of Wisconsin) recently confirmed the film's representation of the people as "complex and ambiguous, on the one hand suggesting justified rebellion, on the other hand showing people in a frightening mass...(always in long shot). The anonymous group acts like a drill team taking cues."