Anthony Ryan’s Top 5 Movie Sword Fights
Previously Anthony Ryan – author of this summer’s epic fantasy blockbuster BLOOD SONG – told us his top five movie battle scenes. This time around, in honour of the considerable amount of swordplay in his own novel, Anthony gives us his top five movie sword fights!
Scaramouche – Stewart Granger vs. Mel Ferrer
No fandangos here as Stewart Granger dons the guise of a masked clown in pre-Revolutionary France to pursue a deadly vendetta against Mel Ferrer’s Royalist assassin. This lavish version of Rafael Sabbatini’s swashbuckler is a technicolor spectacle topped off with the longest swordfight in movie history as Granger and Ferrer match blades the length and breadth of a Paris theatre. Can you guess who wins?
The Duellists – Harvey Keitel vs. Keith Carradine
Ridley Scott’s version of Joseph Conrad’s tale of two French cavalrymen fighting a series of duels spanning the Napoleonic Wars owes much of its visual flair to Scott’s background in TV advertising; lots of painterly landscapes and exquisitely lit interiors. But these are contrasted by the fight scenes which pack a brutally realistic punch, none more so than in the mid-point confrontation where Keitel and Carradine assail each other with sabres in a Paris wine cellar. Expert editing and choreography bring home the terror and exhaustion of physical combat to great effect. (more…)