Gaston Velle and Segundo de Chomon were the two directors at Pathe charged with directing movies in the style of Georges Melies and, using the larger budgets and staffs available to them, eventually drove him out of business.
Neither, however, limited themselves to those movies and in this crime drama from 1904 we have an enormously sophisticated story film in sixteen scenes, using a cyclorama and a film grammar that had clearly evolved into modern film grammar with consecutive action clearly delineated -- compare this to the work that Edwin Porter was doing in the US at the time, works like LIFE OF AN American FIREMAN.
True enough, the acting is clearly stage-bound, the actors flailing around a bit, but for the era the piece is amazingly advanced and even today is understandable and amusing.