Unrelated to the Franz Kafka novel or its film adaptation of the same name (see The Trial, 1962), G.W. Pabst’s Der Prozess (US: The Trial) boldly depicts hateful, violent antisemitism in a film released merely three years after the end of World War II when the wounds of the Holocaust were still painfully raw in the European conscience. Set in a small Hungarian village in 1882 and inspired by an actual blood libel case called the Tiszaeszlár Affair, a teen-aged, Christian girl named Esther (Aglaja Schmid) disappears one day after being seen entering the local synagogue; bitter prejudice and mob mentality soon take over with the townspeople, led by Esther’s mother (Maria Eis), accusing the Jews of slitting the girl’s throat and drinking her blood. Prosecutor Egressey (Iván Petrovich) takes the case to court, where temple servant Scharf (Ernst Deutsch) must defend himself against the mob, including his own son Moritz (Albert Truby), who fabricates witness testimony because he hates his Jewish roots. Bathed in a nighttime glow and adorned with beautifully rendered outdoor scenes (the riverside search for Esther, the floating lanterns of the townsfolk), the film is as visually stunning as it is coldly disturbing, characters at one point laughing about hating Jews, at another point torturing “witnesses” with hot coals to make them talk.