Informed of the danger of an imminent popular uprising, Nero orders to set fire to the city, which he watches from a terrace, rejoicing and playing his lyra.

[2] The scene where Nero is beset by bad conscience, having a vision of the Christians he had sent to martyrdom (shown by a red-toned double exposure shot), had a strong impact on the audience.

It is characterised by lavish sets and costumes and a cinematography which is still very close to theatre representation, with a succession of tableaux vivants filmed by a static frontal camera.

[1] Maria Wyke mentions Nero as "one of the first tentative experiments in the screening of Roman history made by an Italian production house", remarking that it bases its plot on "a vastly condensed synthesis of the Italian dramatic tradition for Nero - from grandiose production of Claudio Monteverdi's opera L'incoronazione di Poppea (first performed in 1642) to recent stagings of Pietro Cossa's popular tragedy Nerone".

Regarding the cinematographic style, she writes: "Highly dependent still on the conventions of the Italian stage, almost every scene of Nerone (...) operates as a self-contained unit within which the actors playing Nero, Octavia or Poppea, planted before papier mâché backdrops and facing their unseen film audience, gesture majestically".