Fábri's subject is again intolerance and human dignity in the more daring social commentary of Professor Hannibal, a film released weeks before the 1956 uprising, and very much in the spirit of the times although its setting is the 1930s. A timid professor publishes an essay on Hannibal and the Punic Wars for which, to his amazement, the authorities go after him with ruthless vigor. It seems his interpretation is unflattering to the Mussolini regime with which Hungary is allied. When the mild-mannered pedant refuses to back down, a Kafkaesque nightmare begins, replete with vigilantism and the public self-criticism that is the ultimate debasement of an individual life. The film, based on a satirical work by Móra, is shot in a style that harks back to German Expressionism, but this professor's "blue angel" is a frightening and absurd force indeed.