"The Tyrant's Heart" ("A zsarnok szíve, avagy Boccaccio Magyarországon", 1981) can be considered a transitional film between the famous historical works of the 1960s and '70s and Jancsó's later, more ironic and self-aware films. While it still has a historical setting (a 15th-century palace in Hungary), the film's ontological inquiry groups it more easily with the director's later period. The film deliberately undercuts the audience's ability to construct a notion of reality in the plot, which contradicts itself and includes many post-modern interventions to raise questions about its own manipulative nature.