The Duellists
1977 · 100 min
Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Gerald Vaughan-Hughes. Starring Keith Carradine, Harvey Keitel, Albert Finney, Edward Fox.
In 1800, as Napoleon Bonaparte rises to power in France, a rivalry erupts between Armand and Gabriel, two lieutenants in the French Army, over a perceived insult. For over a decade, they engage in a series of duels amidst larger conflicts, including the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812, and shifts in the political and social systems of Europe.
Critics 75% · audiences 83% · streaming on fuboTV, MGM+, Philo
What they said about The Duellists
- 1977
The movie, set during the Napoleonic Wars, uses its beauty much in the way that other movies use soundtrack music, to set mood, to complement scenes and even to contradict them.
— Vincent Canby, The New York Times - 1977
The Duellists is an epic yarn; we sit back and observe it, and it's consistently entertaining—and eerily beautiful.
— Pauline Kael, The New Yorker - 1977
The story might have worked if there were an undercurrent of attractiveness to Keitel's loutish character. But he is an unwavering boor from start to finish, and his prowess with weapons is in no way redeeming.
— Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune - 1977
does have an eye for fine compositions, period recreation and arresting tableaus. But it is somewhat surface and too taken up with poses… it rarely illuminates the deeper human aspects of these two flailing men.
— Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune - 1977
The film has the pictorial beauty and rich period sense of Barry Lyndon (1975), but adds the narrative drive and passion that Kubrick's film lacked.
— Michael Webb, The Washington Post - 1977
The best you can say about the film – the directing debut of Ridley Scott – is that it provides an unusually civilized experience in these days of movie barbarism… The worst that can be said is that Keitel and Carradine are so perversely cast as French hussars that, whenever they speak, the splendid illusion of nineteenth-century Europe is shattered.
— David Ansen, Newsweek
How it got made
The Duellists would mark the feature film debut of Ridley Scott, who had previously made television commercials. Its visual style was influenced by Stanley Kubrick's historical drama Barry Lyndon (1975). In both films, duels play an essential role. In his commentary for the DVD release of the film, Scott comments that he was trying to emulate the lush cinematography of Kubrick's film, which approached the naturalistic paintings of the era depicted.
Due to budgetary constraints, Scott decided to shoot the film in a series of tableaux to indicate chapters of the story. The film was made with advice from military historian Richard Holmes.
Scott initially hired Gerald Vaughan-Hughes to write a story about Guy Fawkes and the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, but when financing fell through, Vaughan-Hughes adapted the screenplay from the 1907 novella The Duel by British-Polish writer Joseph Conrad. The genesis of Conrad's story were the real duels during the Napoleonic era between two officers in France's Grande Armée, Pierre Dupont de l'Étang and François Fournier-Sarlovèze, who became D’Hubert and Feraud in The Duel. In The Encyclopedia of the Sword, Nick Evangelista wrote: