Ridley Scott
I Duellanti

 "The Duellists" in my life I must have seen it at least a dozen times, and with each viewing, I felt a new thrill, sometimes due to the chill of the English countryside at dawn, sometimes from the fear of being pierced right in the chest, sometimes from the powerful beauty of a shot akin to a Rembrandt painting.

 Ridley Scott in 1977 is mainly a director of short commercials, and surprisingly, he makes a film that is as far removed as possible from his golden world of tits and glitter. Forced by a low budget, he uses what nature provides: the colors of the landscape, the ruggedness of the ruins, the morning dew vapor, the sparks of crossing swords. All to pay homage to a short story by Joseph Conrad centered on an absurd duel lasting fifteen years between two officers of the Napoleonic army.

  Two men very different from each other, Armand D'Hubert (a magnificent Keith Carradine), impeccable in his elegance, a cold thinker, skilled in diplomacy, a "boudoir soldier," a "lackey" as Gabriel Feraud (an extraordinary Harvey Keitel) calls him, who on the contrary is instinctive, a brotheler, and a madman needing to vent his anger against a man he considers weak. Both, however, are good hussar officers, but Feraud finds a pretext for a duel in Strasbourg in 1800, in the timeframe announced by the caption. The first duel with swords, absurd in its motives inexplicable to everyone, will continue in the following years with different weapons, always interrupted by the injuries of one of the two, never resulting in death. In Lübeck in 1806, it will be on horseback, and in the wet meadows, D'Hubert trembles from cold or fear as Feraud charges towards him.

 The Napoleonic campaigns proceed relentlessly, and the two rise in rank and continue their duel whenever their respective regiments are stationed in the same city. D'Hubert is now disillusioned by the possibility that Feraud might accept a reconciliation, and even for him, crossing swords becomes a sort of written destiny, impossible to change until the end of one of the two. In the Russian campaign of 1812, they face each other half-frozen among the remnants of the exhausted Napoleonic army, in the contrast between the blinding white of the snow and the leaden sky, and it would still be a duel if not interrupted by the arrival of the Cossacks.

 In 1914, with Napoleon exiled on Elba, D'Hubert has the rank of general and is recovering in Tours but wisely refuses to join the emperor's loyalists planning a return, while Feraud is on the front line. With the defeat at Waterloo, their fates are at a crossroads; while Armand is a wealthy and esteemed general of the King with a young pregnant wife, Feraud is among Bonaparte's loyalists on the list for the gallows, but absurdly D'Hubert intervenes with Fouché to save him. And so Feraud is in exile in the French province, shabby in his old war overcoat, harboring resentment over the enemy's success, whom he believes to be a traitor to the ideals.

 The last duel will be with pistols at the freezing dawn in the countryside around D'Hubert's chateau, among the ruined remains, the dew wetting the blades of grass, the play of light from the sun about to rise, and it will be the definitive one.

  Ridley Scott follows it step by step with a handheld camera and uses every blade, every drop, every ray. He will never again be capable of giving me such emotions.