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The Duellists (1977)
Starring Keith Carradine, Harvey Keitel, Albert Finney, and Edward Fox. Cinematography by Frank Tidy. Editing by Pamela Power. Produced by David Puttnam. Written by Gerald Vaughan-Hughes. Directed by Ridley Scott.
It is the year 1800 and France has just launched into the Napoleonic Wars. A soldier named D’Hubert (played by Keith Carradine) is sent to arrest another soldier named Feraud (played by Harvey Keitel) for wounding the mayor’s nephew in a duel. Feraud is offended by the arrest and challenges D’Hubert to another duel.
D’Hubert reluctantly obliges and wins by knocking Feraud unconscious. A year later the two men cross paths and Feraud demands satisfaction for being humiliated in their initial duel. This time Feraud comes up victorious. This pattern continues over the next fifteen years as the two men ceaselessly attack each other with pistols and swords.
By the end of the 1970’s, Ridley Scott was already a very well established commercial director. He and his company RSA (Ridley Scott Associates) had literally been responsible for thousands of television advertisements. He had also worked as a production designer and an art director for the BBC where he assembled sets for television. And his short film, “Boy and Bicycle”, had been very well critically embraced.
This background was just fuel for the fire that was his pending feature filmmaking career. He had actually tried to launch his directorial debut a number of times before creating The Duellists. He started by writing his own heist screenplay called Running in Place that almost made it into production, but fell through just before filming was scheduled to begin.
A medieval horror story titled Castle X found itself in a similar situation after months of development. Undaunted by his lack of progress Scott pressed on. While searching through classic literature, Scott happened upon the works of Joseph Conrad. He initially sought out the rights to Heart of Darkness, but discovered that it had already been optioned by Francis Ford Coppola for his Apocalypse Now. He then decided to shift his attention to Conrad’s short story “The Duel”, which had aged enough to become public domain. Scott used Gerald Vaughan-Hughes, who had collaborated with Scott on two unpublished historical screenplays, to write his adaptation.
At first it seemed more practical to try to bring The Duellists to television. Scott found interest but ultimate rejection from TV producers with Technicinol, EMI, and The Hallmark Hall of Fame. He finally found a home for his pet project at Paramount Pictures who offered to fund it, but were concerned about spending too much money on a potential loss. Scott was able to negotiate for nine hundred thousand dollars which was stretched extremely thin to provide historically accurate props and costumes.
He then shot the picture on location which saved money on sets, but was extremely difficult to film. When all the effort was done, The Duellists opened to critical success and financial failure. But the lack of box office performance can be attributed to the fact that there really wasn’t much of a box office for it to perform in. Scott was only given seven prints of his film to distribute in the US and in its initial run it only played in one Los Angles theater. But the good news was that Scott’s filmmaking career was off and running.
Budget: $900,000
Total US Gross: $???
Genre: War
Runtime: 95 Minutes
US Release Date: 1/14/78
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (intended ratio)
Awards: Cannes Film Festival: Won for Best First Work. Nominated for the Golden Palm.
Tagline: Fencing Is A Science. Loving Is A Passion. Duelling Is An Obsession.
Quote: “General Feraud has made occasional attempts to kill me. That does not give him the right to claim my acquaintance.”
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