The Duellists

Director: Ridley Scott Ridley Scott

Overview

The Duellists is based on a story by Joseph Conrad, variously titled The Duel and The Point of Honour. Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel play officers in Napoleon's army -- D'Hubert and Feraud, respectively -- who spend their off-hours challenging each other to bloody duels. This goes on for nearly 16 years, with neither man showing any inclination of calling a truce. The final clash finds the gentlemanly D'Hubert getting the upper hand of the obsessed Feraud -- but that's not quite the end of the story. The Duellists was the debut feature for director Ridley Scott; it won the Cannes Film Festival prize for Best First Film.

Product Details

Release Date:	12/03/2019
UPC:	0032429333957
Original Release:	1977
Rating:	PG
Source:	ALLIED VAUGHN
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	1:40:00
Sales rank:	6,247

Special Features

Closed Caption; Commentary by director Ridley Scott; Commentary and isolated score by Howard Blake; Dueling directors: Ridley Scott and Kevin Reynolds featurette; Boy and Bicycle: Ridley Scott's first short film; Photo galleries; Storyboards

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Keith Carradine	D'Hubert
Harvey Keitel	Feraud
Albert Finney	Fouche
Edward Fox	Colonel
Cristina Raines	Adele
Robert Stephens	Gen. Treillard
Tom Conti	Jacquin
John McEnery	2nd Major
Diana Quick	Laura
Alun Armstrong	Lacourbe
Maurice Colbourne	Tall Second
Gay Hamilton	Maid
Meg Wynn Owen	Leonie
Jenny Runacre	Mme. de Lionne
Alan Webb	Chevalier
Matthew Guinness	Feraud's Combatant

Technical Credits

Gerald Vaughan-Hughes

David Puttnam	Producer
Ridley Scott	Director
Gerald Vaughan-Hughes	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

The Duellists (1977) may look an awful lot like Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), but first-time feature director Ridley Scott can hardly be faulted for picking such a sumptuous model. Based on a Joseph Conrad story (yet also structured around a series of duels like Barry Lyndon), adman -- and camera operator -- Scott turned The Duellists into a lusciously photographed spectacle of Napoleon-era France, complete with chiaroscuro interiors and painterly landscapes akin to Kubrick's vision of 18th century England. Along with the almost palpable visual atmosphere, particularly in the ice-cold sequence of Napoleon's Russian campaign, the kinetic dueling scenes between Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel revealed Scott's well-honed control over the medium long before Gladiator (2000). Though Carradine and Keitel might not seem the obvious choices to play French army officers, their pointlessly adversarial relationship becomes as metaphorically effective as the actors' surroundings in communicating the psychic fallout of war and politics. Critically hailed as one of the most beautiful films of the year, The Duellists won Scott the Best First Film prize at the Cannes Film Festival and earned a BAFTA nomination for cinematographer Frank Tidy.