Georges Hatot was an early director whose works were distributed by the Lumieres. He had a specialty in death scenes starting with his first credited film showing Nero poisoning slaves. Earlier, he had worked at the Hippodrome Theater directing crowd scenes.His movies were expansions of tableaux vivantes in which famous paintings were directed on stage, motionless scenes which were popular in no small part because they were an exception to morality laws which forbade nude acting on stage. Violent deaths also appealed to prurient tastes and this shooting scene -- in reality Robespierre tried to shoot himself and was guillotined soon after.However, reality has never been a strong point of commercial film making and this violent scene is well staged and executed.