The Duellists

I can't believe it took me this long (by which I mean my entire life) to see Ridley Scott's first feature film, THE DUELLISTS. This is a terrific film: visually striking, psychologically revealing, alternating drama with action and black comedy while delivering a profound message about the human condition. Wow. It's terrific, and easily stands as one of his best works. It's easy to see why he was given the go ahead to direct ALIEN after shooting this visual and emotional feast.THE DUELLISTS begins, fittingly, with a duel. The time? The reign of Napoleon. The place? France. Lieutenant Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel) skewers the son of the local mayor in a duel fought over some minor point of honor. Irritated by the mayor's fury, Feraud's commanding officer orders Lieutenant Armand d'Hubert (Keith Carradine) to arrest Feraud and place him under house arrest. Feraud, a short-tempered, touchy, irrationally vindictive man whose defining characteristic is blood-thirst, cannot challenge his sharp-tongued superior because military discipline limits dueling to officers of equal rank only, so he takes out his umbrage on the unassuming messenger, d'Hubert, and forces him into, you guessed it, another duel. Though Feraud is rather the better swordsman, and certainly the aggressor, d'Hubert wins the exchange, but is prevented from killing Feraud by the intervention of Feraud's mistress. This begins an epic feud between the two men, carried out with rapiers, sabers and pistols, on foot and on horseback, which goes on for years, from France to Russia and back to France again, against a lavish backdrop of period costumes and the European countryside, which is alternately portrayed as being as beautiful, and as cruel, as the film's two subjects.If this seems like a very shallow recounting of the story, I can only say that the story itself is rather shallow, and I do not mean that as an insult. The attraction of THE DEULLISTS is not the plot per se, but its examination -- sometimes funny, sometimes horrifying -- of the concepts of honor and obsession. THE DUELLISTS effected me very much, in an oddly positive way. I completely identified with Keith Carradine's character of Armand d'Hubert. His entire life turns on the fact that a man “imprisoned by his own hatred” takes an irrational dislike of him and won't let go. Faced with this, D'Hubert does what any normal, rational man would do, and tries to avoid conflict, yet his pride and his sense of honor forces him to respond to every challenge even though he grasps their absurdity. In a sense, this is an analogy for parts of my own life, and speaking more broadly, for the attitude many have toward life, which is a persecuted attitude. Yet the attitude itself doesn't spring out of nowhere. It's rooted in personal experience, and I think this is why I was so affected by the movie. Feraud represents everyone who ever picked a fight with you on a playground or in a bar for no reason, or for a "reason" so trivial it could only be a pretext. He is every woman you ever dated casually for a month who still talks trash about you to all and sundry fifteen years later. He is that crazy neighbor who slashes your tires and sugars your gas tank because you accidentally bumped into his trash can while pulling out of your driveway. In other words, he is the antagonist you neither deserved nor wanted, a bully who does not back down even after you break his nose. Indeed, the very act of breaking his nose only fuels his need for vendetta. And that is another part of the movie's genius. It does not "explain" why Feraud is the way he is, because he is meant to be inexplicable. All we know is the inciting incident, a trivial one, snowballs into a lifelong obsession whose origins, I would bet, Feraud cannot even remember by the end of the movie. His need to hate is so powerful it must find an outlet -- period final. It is telling that even in the duel where he clearly defeats d'Hubert, he is unsatisifed, because d'Hubert is not dead, so he rejects the olive branch which is proferred and continues his vendetta. At the core of it is this awful truth: his hatred gives him no rest, so D'Hubert will have no rest, either.THE DUELLISTS is not all psychology and violence. There is considerable humor, too. Ridley Scott pokes rude fun at the idea of people hacking themselves into horrors of torn flesh and pouring blood over points of honor so minor you need a microscope to see them. He relishes too, the absurdity of two men in the same army spending every moment trying to kill each other instead of the enemy -- indeed, in the Russian sequence in 1812, the two foes have to interrupt their duel to fight some Cossack cavalrymen, and afterwards, Feraud looks utterly disgusted when he realizes their pistols are now empty and they can't finish the fight. Similarly, though the years pass and at least five duels are fought, often to the point of death, the two characters do not really change. D'Hubert remains comically upright and decent, Feraud comically single-minded and bloodthirsty. If either man learns anything much from their private war, they aren't at pains to show it.THE DUELLISTS has been accused with some justification of being shallow in its depictions, curious in its casting, and also of marginalizing its antagonist, but I think those criticisms, while valid, are also irrelevant. What we have here, in essence, is the story of two distinct parts of the human spirit. Feraud is "they" -- the enemy, the antagonist, the schoolyard bully. D'Hubert, on the other hand, is "us," just as Jamie Lee Curtis is "us" in HALLOWEEN or Toni Colette is "us" in CLOCKWATCHERS. He's there to show the audience not so much how we would react to this kind of bullying, but how we should react to it, without being preachy or unrealistic. D'Hubert may or may not lose his life, but he will not lose his identity.So, while some may find it curious to see Harvey Keitel -- the quintessential Brooklyn actor -- and Keith Carradine -- the quintessential cowboy actor -- playing 19th century French officers, all I can say about THE DUELLISTS is that you will take more away from it than you brought. And that is saying very much indeed.

I can see where people say that Ridley Scott attempts to replicate the cinematography of Barry Lyndon. While Scott does a good job of doing that, Barry Lyndon is slightly superior to The Duelists in terms of using natural light. The locations and scenery used in The Duelists are also good. In terms of musical score, Barry Lyndon will always be superior to the score used in The Duelists despite the somewhat overused Franz Schubert piece. The plot of both of these movies take place in the late 1790s- early 1800s. Barry Lyndon focuses on one man who rises through the levels of society while The Duelists focuses on "retaining honor" through duels and pokes fun how ridiculous it can be. I love Barry Lyndon for the cinematic masterpiece for what it is but the plot for The Duelists is where it shines just a little bit more than Barry Lyndon. The Duelists has a little bit more of an exciting twist near the end compared to Barry Lyndon. Overall a good film.

When film fans think of director Ridley Scott, his sci-fi classics "Alien"(1979) and "Blade Runner"(1982) spring immediately to our minds. Yet Ridley Scott is nothing if not diverse in his choice of films to direct. His historical war films range from "Gladiator", the 2000 Oscar winner for Best Picture, set in imperial Rome, to "Kingdom of Heaven"(2005), a very contemporary take on the Crusades. Western forces conflict with Muslim ones again in his masterpiece, "Black Hawk Down" (2001), this time during the recent civil war in Somalia.Scott also directed the landmark feminist film "Thelma and Louise" (1991) and the cops and robbers saga "American Gangster" (2007). His latest is the extremely ambitious sci-fi behemoth "Prometheus" (2012).Such an illustrious film career had to begin somewhere. After a long and prosperous stint in television and advertising, Scott moved into feature film production, winning the Best First Feature Award at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival for "The Duellists", based on Joseph Conrad's short story and set during the Napoleonic Wars."The Duellists" has been lovingly restored in high definition by Paramount Pictures and marketed by the Shout Factory. The sword play rings out loudly and clearly, the blacks are suitably inky and the colors vibrant, both in natural lighting and indoors by candlelight. Indeed, the look and texture of this disc, augmented by Howard Blake's haunting score, has only one rival in the category of period film made during the 1970's,Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon"(1975). "The Duellists" has the advantage of being based on a short story so, at 100 minutes, it is just long enough to create exquisite period detail in its production and costume design, and to present 2 alpha males engaged in mortal combat, a theme that would become a Ridley Scott obsession.The two leading characters/actors could not be more opposite in manner and philosophy of life. Keith Carradine, who attracted favorable notice as an ill-fated cowboy in Robert Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" (1971), and won an Oscar for Best Song for "Nashville"(1975),and Harvey Keitel, most famous for Martin Scorsese's studies of urban pathology, "Mean Streets"(1973) and "Taxi Driver" (1976), portray Napoleonic officers, upwardly mobile to the rank of general. D'Hubert.an aristocratic officer with a keen sense of irony and absurdity faces off against Feraud, a proletarian hothead fueled by class hatred and a self-serving sense of honor. After Feraud seriously wounds a relative of the mayor of Strausbourg, d'Hubert is sent to place him under house arrest.Thus begins a tragedy of errors and misunderstandings which will consume decades of both men's lives from 1800 through the French invasion of Russia in 1812 to the attempted restoration of Napoleon years later.Feraud becomes for d'Hubert the embodiment of the classical Furies, trying on foot and on horseback, using swords and pistols, to kill his self proclaimed enemy, whose sense of honor is genuine and requires him to accept every challenge from the increasingly irrational Feraud.Before the climactic scenes, amidst the ruins of a medieval fortress, d'Hubert tells Feraud's seconds, "We came here to kill each other. Any ground is suitable for that." (I'm tempted to find a filmmaker's commentary on the antiquated code of honor by virtue of the film's final bleak settings).Only after d'Hubert refuses to shoot Feraud when he has the chance can this film story resolve itself. "I shall declare you dead," says d'Hubert. The final image is an enormous close up of the solitary Feraud, his purpose in life having vanished.Although it takes a while to accustom oneself to the spectacle of Harvey Keitel in braids, Keith Carradine, with his long and lanky frame, wears both his moustache and his uniform with great panache, even when limping. The two very modern stars are surrounded by a gallery of well chosen character actors, including Albert Finney, Robert Stephens, Edward Fox and Alan Webb. Among the actresses, Diana Quick makes a strong impression as d'Hubert's mistress, a "lady of the garrison", worldly wise and worldly weary.Producer David Puttnam, who would later win the Oscar for Best Picture for "Chariots of Fire" (1981), helped bring in a masterpiece on quite a limited budget. Cinematographer Frank Tidy's ravishing images are faithfully rendered in high definition. All the artists and craftspeople invoved are honored by this transfer.

The Duelists has been on my movie view list for some time and it has taken me until not to finally watch it. This tale of two men at odds spanning years is masterfully told with the backdrop of Napoleonic Era Europe. I enjoyed every minute of the back and forth not knowing how the tale of these men would end. Although I enjoyed it I sadly do not think that many of my generation or those younger than me would be able to appreciate this as much as perhaps older generations would. I would recommend this movie to those who would enjoy the storytelling and cat-and-mouse like feel compared to the more action packed thriller movies of our modern generation.

Keith Carradine Harvey Keitel play their parts well, and the various duels are very well choreographed.

Few films are more beautiful to look at than Ridley Scott's debut feature from 1977, "The Duellists." Although the bluray release by Shout Factory is only a marginal improvement on the 2002 DVD release, it might be argued that any enhancement of such a sumptuous visual treat should be welcomed.The film rolls like a sequence of classical paintings with Scott's uncanny eye for lighting and colour applied to perfectly composed interiors and ravishing locations in the Dordogne. Uniforms, weapons, fencing techniques and hairstyles are meticulously faithful to the Napoleonic period. The illusion of historical richness is furthered by Howard Blake's evocative score and the thoughtfully elegeant script, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novella, "The Duel."The story is of a long-running duel between two French cavalry officers pursued for its own sake in which ideas of honour, obsession and obligation are examined. Writer Gerald Vaughan-Hughes provides a cinematic dimension by interposing a premarital relationship for one of the protagonists, Armand D'Hubert (Keith Carradine), to accentuate the destructive nature of his contest with adversary, Gabriel Ferraud (Harvey Keitel). Keitel brings a passionate intensity to his role of a resentful man driven "to feed his spite" on a fellow officer of privileged background whom he sees as a pampered "general's poodle." As the hero, Carradine offers the counter-balance of reason with a character of easy charm but one which also raises interesting questions about life's priorities.Good performances are also given by Albert Finney, Robert Stephens, Diana Quick, Meg Wynn Owen, Edward Fox and Tom Conti.Special features: the bluray edition includes an exclusive new interview with Keith Carradine.

This was like watching a painting on a moving ship,then trying to see who moved,but like every good ship, there're a very few merry men,who can hold their own and live to tella tail,of there life at sea and everything else that goes with it,but in this case [on dry land]you have twomen,actually i should say one mans determination to not let his reputation ruined by another mans inability orrookie mistake to embarrassed him,especially in front of the ladies,hence we have the Duellists with [Harvey Keitel]and [Keith Carradine]the before mention who would not stop until one man is dead,what a great movie from Ridley Scottand his first i should say,have to give it Five big stars.

Qualità del blu ray di alto livello, veramente all'altezza della qualità visiva, estetica e cinematografica della pellicola. É uno dei film più belli di Ridley Scott, sicuramente uno dei più personali, che anticipano lo stile visivo del regista ma allo stesso tempo si discosta dal resto della sua filmografia, risultando personale e coraggioso per l'ambientazione e la scelta narrativa (un po' la sua risposta a Barry Lyndon di Kubrick, anche se forse non a quei livelli così "astrali").

El disco es una grabación de mala calidad, como la que puedas hacer en tu casa, lo tuve que devolver ya que ni siquiera se visionaba en mi reproductor, es vergonzoso que este tipo de estafas esten permitidas.... El servicio de amazon estupendo como siempre!

El ambiente de la época es como mágico. Muy entretenida y con desenlace agradable sobre un conflicto (la causa de los duelos) desagradable.La historia trata de dos oficiales de Napoleón, uno de ellos muy pendenciero, y de forma involuntaria un oficial se cruza en su camino. Se crea un conflicto por el que el oficial pendenciero exige un duelo a muerte, esto da lugar a sucesivos duelos a lo largo de los años en diferentes situaciones, porque en ningún duelo llega a morir uno de los duelistas.Una película muy bien hecha, con buena historia, excelente ambientación histórica y muy entretenida. La recomiendo.