The Duellists

I was browsing the various online streaming channels, and one of the channels devoted to 1970s movies had a movie I'd never heard of: The Duellists. Suitably intrigued, I decided I'd watch the movie and do a review of it here.

The movie is loosely based on a short story by Joseph Conrad and, as you might be able to discern from the title, deals with duellists, or at least one duellist. The movie opens up in 1800 in Strasbourg, France. You'll recall from history that this was early on in the Napoleonic era, about the time when he crowned himself emperor of France. Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel) is a lieutenant in the French army who has a thing for duels, as well as a thing for picking the wrong person to challenge to a duel. Not that he's picking people who will kill him, because then he'd be dead and there wouldn't be any more duels; instead, his choices get him into trouble and give him an obsession that's going to last the rest of his life. In Strasbourg, that means injuring the nephew of a powerful local politician.

As a result, the mayor wants Feraud arrested. But, since he's in the military, Feraud is going to have to be arrested by the military police. This leads the general to assign Lt. Armand d'Hubert (Keith Carradine) to arrest Feraud. Feraud decides that this is another slight, and more than enough of a reason to challenge d'Hubert to a duel. This leads to d'Hubert getting into trouble with his commanding officer, and Feraud has another enemy, while d'Hubert would rather have nothing to do with a man like Feraud if he could avoid it.

Unfortunately, if you're watching, it'll be obvious from how long you've been watching that the movie is nowhere near over and that d'Hubert is going to meet up with Feraud again, even though the two of them aren't in the same regiment and Napoleon is sending armies all over Europe. Sure enough, the following year Feraud runs across d'Hubert in Augsburg and challenges d'Hubert to another duel.

One of the rules of French military duels is that they can only be contested by men of the same rank, and this leads d'Hubert to try to get promoted in the hopes that he'll be a different rank from Feraud and then Feraud will not be able to challenge him to yet another duel. And yet somehow, things don't quite work out that way. Feraud and d'Hubert meet again and again over the course of the next 15 years through Napoleon's ups and downs and somewhat differing political views once it becomes clear that Napoleon's tenure in office isn't going to be as long as Napoleon would have hoped. As for d'Hubert, he just wishes the duels would end once and for all....

The Duellists is a visually beautiful movie, largely because director Ridley Scott, making his feature film debut, had seen Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon that had come out not long before and liked that movie's visual style of trying to emulate paintings come to life. Scott shows he's good with a camera as his stylist attempt does more or less succeed.

The bad news, however, is that the visuals are in service of a story that doesn't work all that well, as it's too much a one-note story that the screenwriters tried to flesh out into something feature-length. Also, I don't think Keith Carradine, and certainly not Harvey Keitel, were appropriately cast here. The British actors who play the supporting roles -- some well-known like Albert Finney and some not so well-known -- do much better.

The Duellists is the sort of film that, while watching, it's easy to understand why professional critics gave it such glowing reviews. I have a feeling that average viewers, however, will have a somewhat more mixed view of the film. As always, though, watch and judge for yourself.