The Duellists
Short description
Two officers in the Napoleonic army, Armand d'Hubert and Gabriel Feraud, become locked in a personal quarrel that outlasts the wars around them. Feraud, a hussar lieutenant, is placed under house arrest after wounding a man in a duel; d'Hubert delivers the order and Feraud takes it as an insult, challenging him. What begins as a single affair of honour turns into a series of meetings spread across some fifteen years and much of Europe, as the two men are carried along by the campaigns of the period and by the political changes that follow. Each encounter is fitted around their duties, and each leaves the matter formally settled but not finished.
The Duellists is Ridley Scott's first feature as director, the opening entry in a filmography that would continue with Alien in 1979. Gerald Vaughan-Hughes wrote the screenplay, David Puttnam produced, and Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel play d'Hubert and Feraud. Albert Finney, Edward Fox, Cristina Raines and Robert Stephens appear among a credited cast of thirty-seven, with seventy-three crew members credited. The film runs 100 minutes and was made in the United Kingdom and the United States.
On IMDb it holds 7.4/10 from around 30,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.3/10 from 656 votes. A critics' rating of 7.4/10 from 62 reviews places it level with the IMDb figure and slightly above the TMDB one.
What's left behind the scenes
- After scouting various areas in southwestern France, Ridley Scott chose Sarlat, a Périgord town favored by many producers, and its surroundings (Commarque Castle) as locations for his film.
- Due to limited financial resources, the film was shot entirely on location in France, England, and Scotland. No sets were built. All the buildings shown in the film already existed.
- According to Ridley Scott, Paramount Pictures provided him with a list of four actors from whom he was to choose two for the lead roles (this was a prerequisite for project funding). Scott chose Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel, and spent the next several months persuading them to agree to star in these roles.
- The rapiers were connected to batteries (this was necessary for them to spark), and Harvey Keitel later claimed that he was repeatedly electrocuted.
- According to Ridley Scott, Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel insisted on using real, not prop, rapiers in the fight and duel scenes. In the first part of the film, the French hussars use light cavalry sabers of the 1798 model.
- The filmmakers’ financial resources were so limited that one of the carriages had its rear painted red and the front black, so that it could be mistaken for another carriage.
- After the duel, Harvey Keitel throws away his pistol, so Ridley Scott had to place a mattress on the ground there and position a special person (off-camera) to immediately pick up the pistol. The dueling pistols were the most expensive items among all the props; they were genuine antiques worth $17,000 each.
- The prototypes for the main characters were two historical figures – Pierre Dupont de l'Étan (Armand) and François Fourier Sarloveze (Gabriel). Their first duel took place in 1794, and over the following 19 years, around 30 more encounters occurred. They fought with swords, and Dupont made every effort to avoid pistols, as it was claimed that Fourier never missed. Contrary to what is shown in the film, Dupont and Fourier treated each other warmly between duels, and even had lunch together after them. After 19 years, Dupont decided it was time to end the duels and agreed to a pistol duel for the first time. As in the film, the duelists tracked each other in the forest, each carrying two pistols and having the right to shoot when ready. Dupont tricked Fourier into wasting his bullets on two dummies he had created from readily available materials. After that, he approached Fourier with loaded pistols and declared that if he challenged him to a duel again, they would shoot, and Dupont would shoot first, from a distance of one meter. Fourier permanently withdrew the challenge.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
