by Kristen Howard
Hamida Djandoubi smoked a few cigarettes in the last present moment before he was executed by guillotine in a Marseilles prison , the ultimate penalty for killing his former devotee , Elisabeth Bousquet .
Judge Monique Mabelly , who was present at the death penalty , later wrote :
The next 24-hour interval , on the other side of the rural area , theDeauville Film Festivalwas wrapping up , where a fiddling filmlater calledStar Wars : Episode IV — A New Hopehad been celebrating its French premiere .
It was September 11 , 1977 .
Many people recollect of the closure by compartment as being a very archaic form of execution ; all wig , Marie Antoinette , and the French Revolution . However , the cooccurring appointment of the final execution and the premiere of George Lucas ’s epical blank opera make for an uncomfortable reminder that the machine , often name to as the “ National Razor , ” is n’t such a distant computer storage .
The guillotine was call afterDr . Joseph - Ignace Guillotin , who recommended its purpose to the French National Assembly in 1789 . Guillotin had become frustrated by the inhuman treatment of botched blade and axe decapitation , as well as the deviation in execution method based on socio-economic class — while nobles were behead , common person could be burned to death or broken on a steering wheel , much more painful ways to go . Guillotin champion the machine , which was actually design by a Dr. Antoine Louis , in an endeavour to bring home the bacon a more humane form of end to all classes .
Perhaps paradoxically , Guillotin was actually opposed to great punishment . In fact , the doctor was so horrified when the machine became known as the “ guillotine ” that his house was still petitioning the Gallic government tochange its nameinto the nineteenth century .
Djandoubi ’s carrying out on September 10 , 1977 was the last in France before Justice Minister Robert Badinter finally succeeded in his crusade toabolish the last penalization in 1981 .
But the French premiere date ofA New Hopeisn’t the only connexion that the Star Wars saga has to the macabre equipment . During the last public closure by compartment execution in France , of German serial grampus Eugen Weidmann in 1939 , who was in the gang but a 17 - year - erstwhile boy by the name of Christopher Lee — who would later go on to play Count Dooku / Darth Tyranus in the series .
