The summary and note for this entry were completed with participation from the AFI Academic Network. Summary and note were written by participant Dan Chyutin, a student at the University of Pittsburgh, with Lucy Fischer as academic advisor.


Ridley Scott’s The Duellists is an adaptation of a short story by Joseph Conrad, first published in 1908 as a small illustrated volume under the title “The Point of Honour,” and then later reprinted as “The Duel” in the 1920 collection A Set of Six. According to Conrad’s preface to A Set of Six, the story was based on an actual feud between two French officers in Napoleon’s army. The film remains faithful to the literary source, apart from two major changes: the duel on the Russian front was not included in Conrad’s narrative, and in the ending of the original story, Armand D’Hubert’s marries Adele. When he later writes a letter to Gabriel Feraud, suggesting that the two become friends, Feraud refuses on the grounds that D’Hubert did not name one of his sons after Napoleon. D’Hubert insists on anonymously providing Feraud with financial assistance for the rest of his life.
       Immediately following the opening credits, an unidentified voiceover narration read by Stacey Keach states: “The Duellist demands satisfaction. Honor for him is an appetite. This story is about an eccentric kind of hunger. It is a true story and begins in the year when Napoleon became the ruler of France.” Subsequently, a title appears indicating the place and time of the first duel. Voiceover narration and introductory titles provide precede each dueling sequence in the film.
       The Duellists is Scott’s first feature film. The English-born filmmaker began his career as a set designer for the BBC, and later formed his own company, RSA, with his brother, Tony Scott, to design and direct television commercials. Scott became dissatisfied with his career path, scaled down his involvement at RSA, and began pursuing feature film projects, according to an article in the May 1978 issue of Millimeter. At this point, Scott teamed up with writer Gerald Vaughan-Hughes to develop a script based on the 1605 Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot. However, this project fell through because British studios were uncomfortable with Scott’s lack of feature film experience as a director. In an attempt to prove his marketability, Scott returned to television, directing a one-hour adaptation of a Henry James story for French television. The success of this endeavor prompted the French producers to come up with an offer of over $250,000 for a second project to be directed by Scott. Determined to make a feature film, he did not want to overburden the budget, so Scott searched for source material in the public domain, and, according to Millimeter, after going through the works of Henry James and Jack London, he finally stumbled upon Conrad’s relatively unknown tale “The Duel.” The task of adapting the story to the screen was placed at the hands of Vaughan-Hughes, who produced a script that exceeded the expectations of a television drama. According to a Literature/Film Quarterly essay, Scott pleaded with the French television executives to turn the script into a feature film, and they finally agreed, but, as reported in Millimeter, in the interim, he attempted to seek a film producer and piqued the interest of Enigma Productions owner, David Putnam. An 8 Feb 1978 Var article noted that Putnam met with Paramount executive David Picker at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival and convinced him to invest $1,500,000 in the project. This was a very low budget for a period film, indicating that the studio had little faith in the film’s box-office potential. According to Millimeter, Paramount required Scott to fund some of the production’s preliminary expenses out of his own pocket, but he was later reimbursed.
       Millimeter also reports that Picker initiated casting discussions, during which the leads—Keitel and Carradine—were selected. Scott succeeded in securing commitments from both American actors. The other non-British actor featured prominently in the film was American Cristina Raines, who, as Scott disclosed in his DVD commentary, was Carradine’s girlfriend at the time. Scott cast the supporting roles primarily with established British stage and screen performers such as Edward Fox and Albert Finney. The filmmaker worked with his actors extensively before shooting, discussing the parts and building mutual trust. According to Millimeter, he did not hold many rehearsals, preferring instead to throw the actors into a scene and have their personalities infuse and enliven the characters. The British actors took to their roles more naturally than the Americans, Scott told Millimeter, but the challenge was to tone down their theatricality so that they would be more in tune with Carradine’s and Keitel’s offhand delivery. Scott described Carradine as being slightly intimidated by the material and more prepared than Keitel to “play the script.” Keitel, in a Jan – Feb 1978 Film Comment interview, explained that he immersed himself in the role, reading books and watching films about the Napoleonic period. He expressed regret that his attempts to create a more dimensional character for Feraud were lost in the final edit. Scott refuted this claim, telling Millimeter that he curbed Keitel’s tendency to “milk things” through editing but did not substantially change his character.
       In spite of the relatively low budget, Scott was determined to have his film be visually arresting, equaling and even surpassing the pictorial richness of such period films as Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, which was released the year before and produced for significantly more money. A 25 Jan 1977 HR news item indicates that locations for the film included the Northern Scotland countryside and the Dordogne départment of southwest France, especially around the town of Sarlat. Multiple critics, such as Arthur Knight in his 20 Jan 1978 HR review, suggested that in its careful attention to detail, The Duellists revealed Scott’s background as a Royal College art student and a BBC art director.
       According to 30 Oct 1976 LAT and 27 Oct 1976 DV news items, principal photography took place in the fall of 1976. In addition to his directorial duties, Scott also operated the camera in collaboration with director of photography, Frank Tidy. As discussed in Millimeter, the filmmaker was accustomed to operating cameras in his commercial work and felt that for a project like The Duellists, a greater measure of control over lighting and framing was needed. In addition, Scott also storyboarded the entire script—a procedure that afforded him a feeling of security because of its similarity to his working method on commercials.
       According to Millimeter, editing was completed in only ten weeks, because the producers were committed to a premiere date at the Cannes Film Festival. Because of the tight schedule, two editors worked simultaneously. According to Scott, the editors gave him perspective on pace and stopped him from rushing scenes to immediate pay-offs as he would have done in commercials.
       The Duellists premiered at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival and received the Grand Jury Prize. According to a 20 Jan 1978 HR review, the film was a hit in Paris, with long lines of eager spectators forming in front of the Champs-Élysées theatre where it played. In the U.S. domestic market, as Scott explains in his DVD commentary, Paramount only distributed seven prints, and consequently the movie did little business. Reviews of The Duellists on both sides of the Atlantic were mixed. Several periodicals, including HR, criticized Scott’s failure to highlight the human aspects of the film, while others, such as the 30 Jan 1978 review in New York, condemned the casting of American actors to play quintessentially European roles. Although most critics noted the visual mastery evident in Scott’s work, the Dec 1977 MFB review argued that the film’s style, camera angles and picturesque quality were contrived and conveyed “the dampening influence of television.” The Duellists received praise from preeminent writers such as Pauline Kael and Vincent Canby, who, in his 14 Jan 1978 NYT review, called the film “at first compelling and ultimately breathtaking.” Canby defended its picturesque quality, arguing: “it's not a frivolous prettiness, but an evocation of time and place through images that are virtually tactile, and which give real urgency to this curious tale.”