Theme Park at its Darkest

The Duellists

Writing about my intention to harm another person physically is wandering onto the wrong side of the law in a way that may forever be used against me. However, art is a more important consideration, and the more risky a piece of art, the better.

The best artists are like seers, or prophets. The technical skill in rendering a subject is one of refined intelligence, but the ability to see into the fabric of life and interpret it is the ultimate. And believe it or not, all of these efforts to write everything down is, on my behalf, a matter of trying to walk a moral line.

The film The Duellists is based on a story written by Joseph Conrad. It took me years to track it down and, like everything else I’ve read by Conrad, was a major disappointment. Ridley Scott won the award for best first film at the Cannes Film Festival in 1977 for his interpretation, and I consider it to be the vastly more substantial text.

It’s about two young infantrymen in Napoleon’s army. Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel) is a notorious firebrand who very nearly kills another man in a duel. Armand d’Hubert (played by Keith Carradine) is charged to bring him to face military justice and, when attempting to arrest Feraud, is himself challenged to a duel with sabres.

This locks the two men into a twenty-year hostility that is driven by the larger wheels of Napoleon’s fortunes as conqueror of Europe. The film concerns itself with what makes men fight and how that changes with maturity. It is also quite plain in terms of how it presents the necessity of growing out of it, which is not something I can deny.     

Why this film is classified as a period drama and The Wild Bunch isn’t, I cannot say. Of the two leads of the film, Harvey Keitel, possibly because of his star power, is probably the more magnetic. However, the arc of the story isn’t kind to Feraud.

He is consumed by his passion for duelling and the grudge he has held for decades ultimately divests him of everything else. This is the gunpowder charge of the film’s climax; d’Hubert has everything to live for, everything that Feraud does not.  

I understand the film and no matter how much I think or what I write, that understanding grates against everything that you have read thus far.

I am aware that I am closer in character to Feraud than d’Hubert.

This entry was posted on April 18, 2024 at 4:31 am and is filed under The Duel with tags Armand d'Hubert, Cannes Film Festival 1977, Gabriel Feraud, Harvey Keitel, Joseph Conrad, Napoleon, Ridley Scott, The Duellists, The Wild Bunch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.