But who is this impassive man, a nargileh enthusiast who ingests quantities of cocaine to calm a short-lived agitation?  Like Mabuse, Fu Manchu and Fantômas, Nicholson here is one of the reincarnations of the evil heroes of the age. In 1911, two years before this film, Schnedler-Sorensen (1896–1947) filmed the first episode (called The Illusion of Death) of a detective series in Copenhagen that stages the odious exploits of another doctor:  the famous Gar El Hama. Owning a wide range of disguises that allows him to deceive the authorities, this oriental doctor is already considered to be a forerunner.

In 1906 the Nordisk Films Kompagni founded by Ole Olsen (1863–1943) imposed itself on the world market to rival the big European firms.  The markets aimed at were German, Swedish and Russian where the rate of local production allowed Danish films to be the leader with its added advantage of a shared mentality.  Contrary to comedies from Pathé, the first Danish films were poles apart from fairground themes. They were widely inspired by novels and dramas from around the world that were fashionable in Germany and Scandinavia.  Allowing for exceptions like here, happy endings were rare and even too many for the nihilist taste of the bourgeois Russian public that wallowed in tragic endings.

In 1910 the Dansk Kinograf Films company that made Dr. Nicholson og den blaa Diamant was launched.  It presented one of the biggest successes of the Nordic film industry of the time, The Four Devils (1911). Dansk Kinograf Films continued to produce over several years, notably with Edith Psilander (1879-1968) as the main film star up until 1916, when the company was taken over by Nordisk.

The original music for this film was composed by Florian Doidy in 2010 in the context of the call for proposals launched in partnership with the Sacem (Société des auteurs compositeurs et éditeurs de musique – Society of authors, composers and music editors).