Paris, spring 1794, and the Reign of Terror has the city under the watchful eye of fear, with scarce bread and rain-soaked queues that slow the daily grind. Robespierre, Wojciech Pszoniak, lies ill in a dim flat but remains deeply tuned to the currents of power outside his door. He watches Danton, Gérard Depardieu, ride back into the capital to thunderous public acclaim, his return feeding the hope of ordinary people who hunger not just for bread but for a voice they can trust. The pair occupy opposite ends of a widening political chasm, even as Robespierre’s own grip on the revolutionary project tightens around him.
Across town, the machinery of repression moves with cold efficiency. Héron, Alain Macé, head of the secret police, arrives to crush Desmoulins’ print shop, halting the flow of Le Vieux Cordelier’s pro‑Danton circulars. Camille Desmoulins, Patrice Chéreau, is furious at the blow to his publishing work and resists any attempt to be silenced, while his wife Lucile Desmoulins, Angela Winkler, pleads for calm and life for her husband. Robespierre, briefly cared for by his barber, is urged by his ally Saint-Just, Bogusław Linda, to move decisively against Danton. Yet Robespierre hesitates, not wanting to sacrifice the fragile balance he believes keeps the Republic intact, even as the Committee of Public Safety presses forward with its plan.
Before the day’s sitting of the National Convention, General Westermann, Jacques Villeret, and his supporters sketch a plan for a coup to topple Robespierre’s inner circle. Danton disapproves of any illegal venture, even as friends warn that Robespierre intends to jail him. Danton acts with a stubborn belief in the power of his newspaper and the people’s affection to shield him, and he asks his ally Bourdon, Andrzej Seweryn, to denounce Héron and the secret police in the Convention, a move that rattles the gauntlet of power and signals the widening rift between them.
That night, Danton invites Robespierre to an elaborate dinner, hoping to sway him, but Robespierre refuses to eat and presses for a candid talk. After Robespierre leaves, Danton encounters a group of armed men who turn out to be Westermann’s conspirators, though Danton refuses to join their illegal venture. With the pressure mounting, Robespierre makes a decisive move and travels to Desmoulins’ house, where he tries to persuade him that Danton is using him, a claim Desmoulins rejects. Desmoulins’ wife again begs for life, and Robespierre returns to the Committee with an order for the arrest of Danton, Desmoulins, Westermann and several associates, signaling a dramatic escalation in the struggle for control.
The next morning at the National Convention, outraged delegates confront Robespierre’s justification: Danton is branded an enemy of the Republic and must be tried, regardless of his popularity. Although Danton initially evades arrest, Bourdon shifts sides and supports Robespierre, broadening the coalition against him. In the Revolutionary Tribunal, the prosecutors’ task is hampered by Danton’s interruptions, which threaten the appearance of due process. Yet even as a fellow prisoner whispers with glee about Danton’s fate, the condemned men press on, hoping to sway jurors who seem reluctant to convict.
In the studio of Jacques-Louis David, Robespierre learns from Fouquier-Tinville, Roger Planchon, that Danton’s constant interruptions threaten to turn the trial into a farce. A decree follows: anyone who speaks out of turn will be removed from court, and within minutes the accused are ushered out as the verdict of guilt is read. The atmosphere tightens as the sense of inevitability settles on the proceedings; the public gaze weighs every gesture, every interruption, every breath.
On the eve of execution, Danton contemplates his own failure to protect the people he sought to champion, a weight thatoutweighs personal fear. The condemned are paraded through silent crowds to the scaffold and guillotined, and in the moment of their deaths Robespierre’s carefully maintained tension finally fractures. Saint-Just, Bogusław Linda, brings fresh encouragement, urging Robespierre toward dictatorship, but the leader recoils in horror, recognizing that a dictatorship would erase the very democracy the Revolution claimed to defend. A child recites the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a haunting reminder of ideals that seem, in hindsight, fatally compromised.
Across the political desert that follows, the revolution’s players—Lazare Carnot, Leonard Pietraszak among them, and Georges Couthon, Tadeusz Huk—move in the wake of power shifts, while the memory of what the Revolution promised lingers in the air like a fading chorus. The film ends on a note of uneasy reflection: even as old certainties crumble, the ideals that gave birth to the Revolution echo in the empty spaces left by the guillotine, challenging every future storyteller to reconcile noble intention with brutal consequence.
