User Reviews

An exercise in irony that is unexpectedly cumbersome considering it was directed by Louis Feuillade, and doesn't really go anywhere. It's in colour, so there is that...

Nero wants to do away with his brother Britannicus, so he has Locustra make up a flagon with a dragon ..... er, a flagon of poisoned wine. However, on its way to its intended victim, it is intercepted by a bunch of young out on a night on the town. Their attitude is "Free Booze!"

There are only three points that strike me, more than a century after this was released. The first is that the actor playing Nero looks like Charles Laughton in the 1930s, playing an ill-tempered toad. The other is that the copy I looked at on YouTube was clearly derived from an old VHS tape... some of the artifacts typical of low-resolution VHS were present. Even so, it is one of the best-preserved examples of color stencil printing I have ever seen.

The object of this dramatic picture is to show how human fate sometimes makes the evil that one may shoot, arrow-like, at another miss the intended butt and make a victim of the one who sent it forth. In this case, the poison Locustra gives to Nero for Britannicus is stolen by her son and causes his death and her own great sorrow. If the spectators could know that in the street scene, the reveler who is stealing the wine is Locustra's son and that she loves him, the picture would be far more effective. As it is, they know it only when the messengers come to Locustra with the sad news. It is a very graceful picture! this reviewer thinks it the best Roman picture he has seen. The street revelers with Locustra's son dance gracefully and make a very beautiful scene. The acting of the whole cast is good; but Locustra's picture of the tragic situation is excellent. The film is colored and the photography is very good. - The Moving Picture World, May 27, 1911