The Duellists (1977)

The Duellists is a 1977 historical drama film and the feature directorial debut of Ridley Scott. 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" (titled "Point of Honor" in the United States) published in A Set of Six.

Reception for The Duellists has been generally positive, with only two critics giving a negative review resulting in a 91% "Fresh" rating and averaging 7.2/10 at Rotten Tomatoes, along with the consensus "Rich, stylized visuals work with effective performances in Ridley Scott's take on Joseph Conrad's Napoleonic story, resulting in an impressive feature film debut for the director."

The film has been compared to Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. In both films, duels play an essential role. In his commentary for the DVD release of his film Scott comments that he was trying to emulate the lush cinematography of Kubrick's film, which approached the naturalistic paintings of the era depicted.

The film is lauded for its historically authentic portrayal of Napoleonic uniforms and military conduct, as well as its generally accurate early-19th-century fencing techniques as recreated by fight choreographer William Hobbs. The military adviser was military historian Richard Holmes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Duellists