The Duellists (1977) on Netflix
Strasbourg, 1800. Lieutenant Gabriel Feraud nearly kills the mayor's nephew in a duel. Sent to confine him, Lieutenant Armand d'Hubert becomes the target of Feraud's challenge.
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Trailer
Plot summary
In Strasbourg in 1800, Gabriel Feraud, a lieutenant in the French 7th Hussars and a committed Bonapartist, nearly kills the mayor's nephew in a duel. The mayor presses Brigadier-General Treillard, who orders Lieutenant Armand d'Hubert to confine Feraud to his quarters. Feraud treats the errand as an insult and demands satisfaction. D'Hubert searches for an honorable way out and finds none. Their first meeting ends with Feraud knocked unconscious, and Feraud's mistress later scratches d'Hubert's face. The general sends d'Hubert back to his regiment. Six months later, in Augsburg, Feraud challenges him again and wounds him badly. While he recovers, his lover Laura urges him to give up the quarrel, but he takes fencing lessons instead.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Duellists (1977)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Fournier-Sarlovèze, known as the "worst subject of the Grande Armée", demanded a rematch after the two officers' first duel in 1794, and at least another 30 rematches followed over 19 years, fought mounted and on foot with swords, sabres and pistols; Fournier-Sarlovèze died aged 53, l'Étang lived to 74.
- Gerald Vaughan-Hughes adapted the screenplay from Joseph Conrad's 1907 novella The Duel, whose genesis was the real Napoleonic-era duels between two officers of France's Grande Armée, Pierre Dupont de l'Étang and François Fournier-Sarlovèze, who became D'Hubert and Feraud in Conrad's story.
- Even though he was out of the film's budget, Albert Finney agreed to appear at the request of his then-girlfriend Diana Quick; he filmed his scene in a single day and took a case of champagne as payment.
- Ridley Scott's first choices for the leads were Oliver Reed and Michael York, the stars of The Three Musketeers, but they were unavailable or out of the budget; Paramount gave Scott a list of four actors he had to choose from to get financing, and he picked Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel, then spent months persuading them.
- Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel, both Americans, chose not to adapt their accents to match their British co-stars, and the leads insisted on using real, un-dulled 1798-pattern light cavalry sabre swords for the sword-duelling sequences.
- Gregory Widen, who went on to write Highlander, has said that The Duellists was the film that inspired him to write it.
