How The Duel­lists set the tone for Rid­ley Scott’s film­mak­ing career

In a cer­tain kind of film, the duel con­cen­trates the big­ger dra­mat­ic stakes at play. There’s no ques­tion that the duel has a place in sev­er­al of Rid­ley Scott’s movies, which is why, on the occa­sion of The Duellist’s 40^th anniver­sary, we’re reflect­ing on the director’s inter­est in sword­play and the ​‘tra­di­tion’ of the sword.

Scott’s debut fea­ture is an adap­ta­tion of Joseph Conrad’s short sto­ry ​‘The Duel’. Scott’s the­mat­ic affin­i­ty for Conrad’s work reg­is­ters in a num­ber of his films, most notably wher­ev­er the dra­ma turns on the col­li­sion of hon­our and dishonour.

The two major influ­ences on the visu­al style of The Duel­lists were Stan­ley Kubrick’s Bar­ry Lyn­don and the French baroque painter Georges de La Tour, whose images offer a clue as to how best to treat light and shad­ow. The film’s penul­ti­mate image is a wide shot show­ing one of the sol­diers look­ing out across a riv­er. It’s a beau­ti­ful­ly com­posed, painter­ly image enhanced by the film’s melan­choly musi­cal score.

The Bar­ry Lyn­don influ­ence is evi­dent not only in the fram­ing but also in the way a num­ber of scenes begin, almost as still-life close ups of fruit and food. Con­trast­ing the sta­t­ic and serene images of land­scapes and inte­ri­ors that are thread­ed through­out the film, Scott employs hand­held shots for the duels, invest­ing each fight scene with ener­gy and a sense of uncer­tain­ty. This method of cap­tur­ing the chaos of one-on-one com­bat is one Scott has returned to again and again over the course of his career.

The film charts the duelling his­to­ry of two sol­diers, d’Hubert (Kei­th Car­ra­dine) and Fer­aud (Har­vey Kei­t­el), over sev­er­al decades – imag­ine a kind of som­bre vari­a­tion on a Tom and Jer­ry car­toon. In keep­ing with the idea of the civ­il and the wild that unfolds across The Duel­lists, one of d’Hubert’s sol­dier friends says of Fer­aud, ​“He’ll hunt you out in the end.”

Even the way that Fer­aud holds his free hand dur­ing the first duel sug­gests a claw primed to maul its prey. Fer­aud taunts d’Hubert in the same way that Roy Bat­ty taunts Rick Deckard in Blade Run­ner and Dark­ness taunts Tom Cruise’s Jack in Leg­end. In Leg­end, it’s a duel that brings the action to an ele­men­tal kind of con­clu­sion, with Tim Curry’s Dark­ness the embod­i­ment of cor­rup­tion and Jack the essence of every­thing that is pure and good.

The Duel­lists also sets the tone for all of Scott’s sub­se­quent his­tor­i­cal films. For instance, you’d nev­er mis­take Scott’s take on Robin Hood for the Errol Fly­nn-star­ring ver­sion of the leg­end. And in King­dom of Heav­en there is a scene in which the age­ing God­frey bestows young Balian with his knight­hood. As this brief scene unfolds the score del­i­cate­ly fus­es Euro­pean and Mid­dle East­ern sounds, as God­frey instructs Balian to, ​“Defend the King.” He then instructs, ​“If the King is no more, pro­tect the peo­ple.” This empha­sis on duty, hon­our and pro­tect­ing ​‘the peo­ple’ chimes with a scene in Glad­i­a­tor where Max­imus and his fel­low slave-fight­ers pre­pare to take on what­ev­er is unleashed upon them.

In The Duel­lists, d’Hubert and Fer­aud are men of action and hon­our but the for­mer is a man of intel­lect, too, and he strug­gles to rec­on­cile the per­son­al and the pro­fes­sion­al. There is a lot at stake when d’Hubert fights one last time: there is a fam­i­ly to live for, just as Max­imus has a fam­i­ly to live for and, even­tu­al­ly, avenge.

In Glad­i­a­tor, Max­imus’ phi­los­o­phy is one of uni­ty in the are­na, recog­nis­ing that hon­our lies not in focus­ing on our dif­fer­ences, and a self-cen­tred indi­vid­u­al­ism, but in the things that bind us togeth­er: ​“What­ev­er comes out of the gates – we’ve got a bet­ter chance of sur­vival if we work togeth­er. If we stay togeth­er we survive.”