>>On the DVD Scott says he wanted York and Reed as they were fine swordsman, the US money men said no and gave him a list of four American actors and he chose Keitel and Carradine.
Ironically he went over budget anyway, losing his fee, having to pay for the costumes, the pistols, etc, and then enduring a tiny release.
Practically no-one saw it until it came out on rental video, and then DVD. Ridley and the studio got their money in the end, just a pity so few people saw it in 1977...
It did get him a great reputation as a stylist director with a Kubrickesque ability to command light [often accidental, just mist and sun, as he readily admitted], and it also got him the directorship of Alien, and the rest is history.
What is lost, comparatively, is his ability with story - the way he took Alien from a simple shocker and made Ripley a landmark woman character in SF and cinema.
And his committment to the story and the film as project: on the Duellists they took his fee, his wide release, and eventually the whole movie, but he made it the way he wanted it.
And we have all benefitted from that these last 30 years.
I have a sense, having seen many films of the time, and of York and Reed, that with them it might have seemed a movie about older men, not young cavalry officers: they were established stars with a large body of work and with big reputations.
On the other hand, Carradine and Keitel were younger men more suited to the story and the acting, and it still seems a young, fresh movie today, not another classic flabby 70s film with a couple of older Brit actors in it - tho' ironically all the other actors - Colborne, McInnery, Finney, etc are all exactly that sort of actor.
My point is it seems a young fresh film still, with young leads, not a dated piece - compare the 1970s Musketeers movies, for instance, who watches them today with the same enthusiasm? Compare also the 1970 de Laurentiis Waterloo which had no young stars and flopped, killing off Kubrick's much-vaunted Napoleon project. It had a galaxy of stars - Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer, Jack Hawkins, etc, but we watch it for the dialogue, the voiced-over thoughts, the costumes and the documentaried choreography of the scenes, not a couple of stars, young or otherwise.
the Duellists with older stars is Rather like imagining Star Wars with older, more established talent instead of Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford :O
"Bud! The crane - we've lost the crane, it's on its way down to you!"
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