The Duellists
by Robbo
Posted on 16 June 2021
Rating -
The Duellists is a 1977 British historical drama film and the feature directorial debut of Ridley Scott and start Keith Carradine, Harvey Keitel, Albert Finney and Tom Conti.
It won the Best Debut Film award at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival.
The basis of the screenplay is the Joseph Conrad short story “The Duel”.
In Strasbourg in 1800, Lieutenant Gabriel Feraud (Keitel) of the French 7th Hussars, a fervent Bonapartist and obsessive duellist, nearly kills the nephew of the city’s mayor in a sword duel.
Under pressure from the mayor, Brigadier-General Treillard orders one of his staff officers, Lieutenant Armand d’Hubert (Carradibe) of the 3rd Hussars, to locate Feraud and place him under house arrest.
d’Hubert finds him at the house of Madame de Lionne, a prominent local lady, but when he delivers the order, Feraud takes it as a personal insult.
Matters are made worse when Feraud demands of d’Hubert if he would “let them spit on Napoleon” and d’Hubert doesn’t reply to Feraud’s satisfaction.
Upon their reaching his quarters, Feraud challenges d’Hubert to a duel. The result is inconclusive; d’Hubert slashes Feraud’s forearm and causes him to fall backwards, hitting his head and knocking himself unconscious, but when d’Hubert goes to assist him he is attacked and facially scratched by Feraud’s mistress.
As a result of the fight, the General dismisses d’Hubert from his staff and returns him to active duty with his regiment.
Over the course of the next 15 years the pair will meet and duel another four times, the original reason for the duel being forgotten and new reasons invented.
The Duellists would mark the feature film debut of Ridley Scott who had previously worked making TV commercials.
Its visual style was influenced by Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 historical drama Barry Lyndon.
Due to budgetary constraints, Scott decided to shoot the film in a series of tableaux to indicate chapters of the story.
This is a film that I have long resisted watching and I don’t know why. As a fan of Ridley Scott’s work I decided to give it a go as it was his directorial debut, and I am really glad I did.
As you would expect from a Ridley Scott film, it is shot beautifully and has his trademark all over it, yet you can also see Kubrik’s influence.
The attention to detail to recreate an authentic 19th Century Europe is superb.
Keitel and Carradine as the two main protagonists give good performances but perhaps are miscast as each time they speak it breaks the illusion of 19th Century Europe.
One criticism would be that the characters are not really developed, it doesn’t really scratch the surface of two complex men which results in both actors descending into stereotypes, the refined aristocrat d’Hubert and the boorish prole Feraud.
Overall though I really enjoyed the film, and for a directorial debut I thought it was really good and well worth an hour and half of anyone’s time.
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