"Whitechapel used to be a famous place for
duellists and many people have seen young men dressed in the clothes of the period fighting," says Billy, whose Paranormal Study Centre is based in Penny Lane.
Deidre Clancy's costumes are fine and flow very well thus, the young
duellists look perfect in smart doublets and tights, drawing rapiers not guns when the going gets rough.
One hears nothing except their whistling breath and the hissing of bullets; slowly the
duellists' arms sink down to the sides of their high black bodies.
And in the early years of the twentieth century the prospect of a duel seemed to be a necessary qualification for a writer; among would-be
duellists were such luminaries as Andrei Belyi, Gumilev, Voloshin, Zoshchenko, Kaverin and Pasternak.
Scott's metaphor for filmmaking is apparent when he says that when he was "shooting" his first feature film The
Duellists (1978), based on Conrad's novella "The Duel" (1907), he was thinking of it not as an art film but as a western.
In his view, ships of the line were designed to act not as elegant
duellists but as engines of destruction.
His first film, The
Duellists, was a fable about, of all things, honor, a theme that Scott's masterly evocation of the Napoleonic era actually managed to put over.
Scott, on the other hand, was a hugely successful and pervasive force in TV advertising, long before "The
Duellists," "Alien," "Blade Runner" or any of the other pictures that mark his singular career in cinema.
Since then, Fox has appeared in A Bridge Too Far, The
Duellists, Gandhi, Never Say Never Again, A Passage to India, Lost in Space, Stage Beauty and Oliver Twist.
Wednesday: The
Duellists (Film4, 7pm) What's It About?
DUELLISTS: Nottingham Forest''s Paul McKenna (left) and Queens Park Rangers'' Rob Hulse (right) in action during their 1-1 draw
He told me that he had seen the two sword-fencing figures about two years before, and other taxi drivers had reported seeing the same "
duellists".
Following Sunday's opening ceremony and medieval procession through the town, yesterday saw more live music and dancers take to the stage in the Market Square and a performance by re-enactment group Dawn
Duellists.
It's great to hear the
duellists playing down the import of this head-to-head.
Sir Ridley had already made an artistic impression with his first film, The
Duellists, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes, but Alien secured his reputation internationally.
