Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. Pretty much scene by scene and as Sabatini wrote it (not something most movie companies are constitutionally capable of doing, even with unlimited budgets). To do this right would require a mini-series of some length, comparable to some seen on Masterpiece Theatre, because the novel is much too involved and complex to be done in a two or three hour feature movie. The story as Sabatini wrote it is a real gripper!

There have been a couple of European versions that were way wide of the mark, and there was that Hollywood thingy in 1952 with Stewart Granger, Janet Leigh, and Mel Ferrer. This took a variation of the novel's major plot-twist (a real shocker in the novel) and turned the whole thing into a light-hearted romp. Among many other things that really need to be done right is the culminating duel scene between André-Louis Moreau and the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr. It should not include running up and down stairs and swinging from chandeliers. In the novel, it was a formal duel, complete with seconds standing by, fought shortly after dawn in the Bois de Boulogne. The excitement came, not through lots of flashy action, but through sheer suspense. Each was a master swordsman and knew that the other was too. Add to this that the two primary women in the story were rushing to the dueling ground, each with an overwhelming reason why the duel had to be stopped. Look-alikes are essential, of course, but except for close-ups, the duel scene should be not be done by the two actors, nor by two stunt-men trained in the usual tricks of movie swordplay, but by two very good fencers.

A real duel—armed with three feet of sharp steel and facing someone similarly armed—is enough to scare the poop out of anyone, without having to throw in stairs to run up and down, chandeliers to swing from, and rugs to slip on. In most movie duel scenes, the participants do things that no one in his right mind would do in a real duel, and they miss opportunities to dispatch their opponent and extricate themselves from a lethally dangerous situation just to do something stupid and flashy. I think Hollywood is incapable of filming a good, realistic duel scene (except that those in The Duellists (Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel, 1977) looked pretty realistic—but I don't think that was a Hollywood production—British, I think).

Good duel scenes are a hobbyhorse of mine. I rarely see one. But in any case, Scaramouche would make a terrific mini-series if done right.

Don Firth