The Duellists is a 1977 historical drama film that was Ridley Scott's first feature film as a director. It won the Best Debut Film award at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. The basis of the screenplay is the Joseph Conrad short story The Duel published in A Set of Six. In Strasbourg in 1800, obsessive duellist Lieutenant Gabriel Feraud of the French 7th Hussars nearly kills the nephew of the city's mayor in a sword duel. Under pressure from the mayor, Brigadier-General Treillard sends Lieutenant Armand d'Hubert of the 3rd Hussars to put him under house arrest. As the arrest takes place in... the house of a prominent local lady , Feraud takes it as a personal insult from d'Hubert and challenges him to a duel. D'Hubert, however, manages to knock him unconscious. The war intervenes in the men's quarrel and they do not meet again until six months later, in Augsburg in 1801. Feraud immediately challenges d'Hubert to another duel and seriously wounds him. Recovering, d'Hubert takes lessons from a fencing master and in the next duel the two men fight each other to a standstill.
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| Release date: | December 1977 |
| Directed by: | Ridley Scott |
| Rated: |  |
| Runtime: | 100 Minutes |
| Producer: | David Puttnam |
| Editor: | Pamela Power |
| Music by: | Howard Blake |
| Cinematography: | Frank Tidy |
| Screenplay by: | Gerald Vaughan-Hughes, Joseph Conrad |
| Estimated budget: | $900,000 |
| Adapted from: | The Duel |