Ridley Scott, film by film

Ridley Scott has been one of my favorite directors since I first saw Alien in 1979 with a group of friends. He has not just a distinct visual vision, which might be called gritty and yet poetic at the same time, but each of his films also has some content. Several of his films I've missed over the years, but I've been playing catch-up recently, and propose doing a film by film watch and discussion here, if there's enough interest in it.

I just watched his first film, The Duellists, from 1977, which is available streaming from Amazon for $3.

Anyway, here's a little bit of biographical background from wikipedia:

Scott was born 30 November 1937 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear in the North East of England,[2] the son of Elizabeth and Colonel Francis Percy Scott.[3] He was brought up in an army family, so for most of his early life, his father — an officer in theRoyal Engineers — was absent. His elder brother, Frank, joined the Merchant Navy when he was still young and the pair had little contact. During this time the family moved around, living in (among other areas) Cumberland, Wales and Germany. He had a younger brother, Tony, who also became a film director. After the Second World War, the Scott family moved back to their nativeNorth East, eventually settling on Greens Beck Road, Hartburn, Stockton on Tees, Teesside (whose industrial landscape would later inspire similar scenes in Blade Runner), where he studied at Grangefield Grammar School and West Hartlepool College of Art from 1954 to 1958, obtaining a Diploma in Design.

Scott went on to study at the Royal College of Art, contributing to college magazine ARK and helping to establish the college film department. For his final show, he made a black and white short film, Boy and Bicycle, starring both his younger brother and his father (the film was later released on the 'Extras' section of The Duellists DVD). In February 1963 Scott was named in title credits as "Designer" for the BBC television programme Tonight, about the severe winter of 1963. After graduation in 1963, he secured a job as a trainee set designer with the BBC, leading to work on the popular television police series Z-Cars and science fiction series Out of the Unknown. He was originally assigned to design the second Doctor Who serial, The Daleks, which would have entailed realising the famous alien creatures. However, shortly before Scott was due to start work, a schedule conflict meant he was replaced on the serial by Raymond Cusick.[4] In 1965, he began directing episodes of television series for the BBC, only one of which, an episode of Adam Adamant Lives!, is available commercially. (He directed two others, but these have been wiped.)

In 1968, Ridley and Tony Scott founded Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), a film and commercial production company.[5] Working alongside Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson and cinematographer Hugh Johnson Ridley Scott made many commercials at RSA during the 1970s, including a notable 1974 Hovis advert, "Bike Round" (featuring the New World Symphony), filmed in Shaftesbury, Dorset.

 

The original trailer for Ridley Scott's first film, The Duellists (1977):



I going to say, unless someone objects, that spoilers of any kind are allowed. In other words, if spoilers bother you, don't read until you've seen the movie.

from imdb:

The film's source short-story by Joseph Conrad was based on a true story of two real life French Hussar officers who regularly fought real duels together during the reign of 'Napoleon Bonaparte'

Because of the limited budget, the film was shot entirely on location in France, England and Scotland. No sets or buildings were built at all. Every building in the movie was a pre-existing structure.

According to director Ridley Scott, Paramount gave him a list of four actors to choose from for the two leads, which he had to agree to in order to receive financing. Scott selected Carradine and Keitel, then spent several months trying to convince them to accept the roles.

According to director Ridley Scott, lead actors Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel insisted upon using real saber swords for the sword dueling sequences. The swords used by the French Hussars in the first part of the movie are all English 1798-pattern light cavalry sabers.

Director Ridley Scott once said of the film's central theme: "The one man played byHarvey Keitel is a prisoner of his own hatred. He must kill or be killed. Keith Carradineplays the other man who is honor bound to fight. It is a fascinating story of man's violence within himself".

Ridley Scott said that after having directed anywhere from 1500 to 2000 TV commercials he realized no one was going to approach him about directing a film so he'd have to take the lead. Since his funds were limited he used a public domain source for the story and commissioned the script for this movie on his own.

Theatrical feature film debut of director Ridley Scott who for this film won the Best First Film Award at the 30th Cannes Film Festival in 1977. The movie was also the first film of cinematographer Frank Tidy as well as the first cinema movie of actor Pete Postlethwaitewho played the small role of a man shaving General Treillard.

 

Ridley Scott on how commercials were his film school:



Surreal little video of Ridley Scott on making The Duellists:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vscvowzK-7g

Ridley Scott took no fee whatsoever for directing his first film.

 

Ridley Scott on the diversity of his films:

 

Think this is his best film.
Either that or" Kingdom Of Heaven".

 

Great thread idea.

 

I'll be checking in on this thread, great idea!

 

Paramount, where is the Region "B" Blu-Ray disc of "The Duellists" ?????

...and before somebody sends me a link to "Los Duellistas" ( with English/Spanish tracks and subs), somebody reported that it's a BD-R!

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Duellists-Blu-ray/104877/#UserReviews


...sorry for the rant

 

Bladerunner is still my favourite Scott film. Visually, it's a work of Art. A masterpiece.

 

Ridley Scott is often my favorite director. Great thread idea, thank you for this.

I must sheepishly admit I had a tough time sitting through and finishing The Duelists several years ago. I do want to give it another shot soon.

 

I was one of the sound FX editors/sound designers on a team that did 9 (I think) Ridley films starting with "Gladiator" and including the "Blade Runner" director's cut 5.1 remaster.
I'll check in occasionally and offer insight on particular films if I can.

 

Glad some people are chiming in. Thanks.

The Duellists is a good film. You can see how from the evidence of this work, Fox hired him to helm Alien. Almost every shot is beautifully done. Even the violence is choreographed in that realistic and yet artistic way that's a hallmark of Scott's work. The cinematographer, Frank Tidy, doesn't seem to have worked with RS again, but certainly did fine work here. Some of the images almost look like paintings to me—and I'm an art historian. The themes of obsession persisting over time, but with a radical ending that isn't expected (or at least wasn't by me), seems typical of the narrative vision he has.

What's Scott's narrative vision? Hard to say. But imho most of the time, except for maybe Thelma and Louise, after driving you to the edge of what I seem to be able to take, he gives you some hope—not just for this story, but for humanity, almost. It's a measured hope, however, filled with ambivalences and suffering and costs.

Drink from Ridley Scott's directorial brew and it's strong stuff, but ultimately nourishing—not just aesthetically, but in terms of the moral and even intellectual journey.

All that having been said, I would not say that The Duellists is my favorite by a long shot. To me it's a good film that shows this guy has a lot of promise, but that promise would be most richly fulfilled in the films ahead.

Giving something as complex as a film a letter grade seems a bit simplistic, perhaps, But for me, after one viewing, I'd say that the Duellists is about a "B+" for me. Hope some others will chime in with their rating on whatever scale they choose, or just write some narrative observations.

 

Please feel free to keep discussing The Duellists, but I'd like at the same time to move on to what was his first big Hollywood film, and that one that really launched his career, as well as some others in this film. The movie, of course, is Alien, here's the original trailer:



(suggest that you watch HD full screen.)

I remember watching this at age 14 and thinking "Shi*! That looks intense." I'd never seen anything like it.

 

And here's an excellent documentary on making the film, including the surprise casting of the nearly unknown Sigourney Weaver, in what was to be a signature role. Ridley Scott and his casting director did an outstanding job filing the roles, including Scott driving over to John Hurt's house the night before filming was to start to replace an actor who had to drop out for illness. Veronica Cartwright was originally going to play Ripley, but I think Scott was right in recasting her. Lots of other good information in this huge documentary.

 

from imdb trivia:

To get Jones the cat to react fearfully to the descending Alien, a German Shepherd was placed in front of him with a screen between the two, so the cat wouldn't see it at first, and came over. The screen was then suddenly removed to make Jones stop, and start hissing.

John Hurt, did not know what would happen during the chestburster scene is partly true. The scene had been explained for them, but they did not know specifics. For instance, Veronica Cartwright did not expect to be sprayed with blood.

The Who. The band was testing out the lasers for their stage show in the soundstage next door.

Ron Cobb who came up with the idea that the Alien should bleed acid. This came about when Dan O'Bannon couldn't find a reason why the Nostromo crew just wouldn't shoot the Alien with a gun.

Ridley Scott cites three films as the shaping influences on his movie: Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) for their depiction of outer space, and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) (1974) for its treatment of horror.

Ridley Scott used cattle hearts and stomachs. The tail of the facehugger was sheep intestine.

Bolaji Badejo who plays the Alien in the movie was a graphic artist who was discovered at a pub by one of the casting directors. He was about 7 feet tall with thin arms - just what they needed to fit into the Alien costume. He was sent for Tai Chi and Mime classes to learn how to slow down his movements. A special swing had to be constructed for him to sit down during filming as he could not sit down on a regular chair once he was suited up because of the Alien's tail.

Barbara Gips came up with the famed tagline: "In space, no one can hear you scream."

Ridley Scott, determined at all costs to dispel any notion of a man in a rubber suit, filmed the beast in varying close-up angles of its ghastly profile, very rarely capturing the beast in its entirety.

H.R. Giger's original illustrations the creature has eyes. For the movie, Giger insisted that the creature have no eyes, thus giving the bleak appearance of a cold and emotionless beast.

Yaphet Kotto, Ridley Scott told him to annoy Sigourney Weaver off-camera so that there would be tension between their characters. Kotto regrets this because he really liked Weaver.

Ridley Scott and Veronica Cartwright, every time she went to slapSigourney Weaver, Sigourney would shy away. After about three or four takes of this, Scott finally told Cartwright "Not to hold back. Really hit her." Thus the very real shocked reactions of Weaver, Yaphet Kotto, and Harry Dean Stanton.

Many of the interior features of the Nostromo came from airplane graveyards.

 

Saw this in the theater a week before the movie opened, in April of 1979, at a special preview at the big Edward's Newport Cinema in 70mm 6 track dolby stereo. That theater holds 2000 and it was completely sold out. We had no idea what was going to happen. I've never had such a visceral cinematic experience in my life. 2000 people screaming in shock and trying to climb out of their seats at once is difficult to forget. Afterward, driving home, there was an electrical short in the rear of the Toyota Celica my friend was driving, the lights back there looked almost exactly like the flashing lights at the end of the movie. We were both close to screaming.

What is Alien about? All sorts of things might be read into it. I once heard someone read it as a metaphor for a deadly illness. Don't know about that, but it was, for its time, a feminist film, but it just did it without talking about it, which was such a breath of fresh air. And, of course, the film also had a cynical and dark take about the harm that corporations and governments can get up to. It's cynical and dark, but the last 35 years have shown to some of us, perhaps, that it wasn't quite as unrealistic as maybe it seemed at the time.

Anyone else with first time viewing memories or interpretations of the film?

 

I saw it as a nasty male vision of pregnancy and birth--many guys are somewhat put off by both and the fetus could be seen as a parasite. I know the face bigger was deliberately designed and written about the way it was because of how it would translate into the rape of a male and play to that level,of discomfort.

Either way, Scott's first two films are brilliant and, except for "Blade Runner" (flawed. As it is/was), "Thelma and Louise" and the roadshow version of "Kingdom of Heaven" stand as among is best films.
I took m dad to see "Alien" and he compared it to the tension of waiting for your enemy to attack during wartime and that it scared the heck out of him. It did me, too much as "The Exorcist" did it created a credible world that seemed rather boring in its own way(although it was future boring so to speak) and then, Hurt's character becomes "possessed" giving birth to an entirely different and u expected creature. There are structural parallels between the two films as well.

For the record, I had seen "The Duelist" in some art house theater around the time of "Alien".

 

Does anyone think CGI is homogenizing films?

 

No. Unimaginative filmmakers are homogenizing films.

The next film of his that I'm looking forward to seeing is The Martian (2015), which also has a great cast, including Matt Damon, Kate Mara, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Donald Glover (from Community)

 

I think it's removing the personality of the great directors from their newer films.

 

CGI is just a tool. It's up to the filmmaker to use it wisely, or not. Great use of CGI is often not even noticed as such.

 

Let me illustrate my last point about effective use of CGI. Wolf Of Wall Street is a pretty conventional film (ie, non-genre) and yet it's full of 'invisible' CGI. Take a look at this compilation:

 

Ridley Scott talking in 1979 about he was more certain about H R Giger for the alien design than anything in his film life up to that point:



RS's enthusiasm, understated as it is, is clearly something that's an essential quality he has as a director. He also spent several years in art school, and so he could recognize art and production design in a way that is different than some other directors imho.

 

Here's a short doc on the late, great Giger. Giger himself is talking starting at the c. 4 minute mark.

 

The studio kept telling Ridley Scott back in 1978 and 1979 "nothing much happens for the first 45 minutes." He said, more or less, that's the point, bc it shows them the "realism" of mining, and gets them to know the characters. Got graphic designers to design the title sequence, which was quite effective. Big battles with brilliant director Jerry Goldmith. You can listen on the blu-ray to both versions. You can see why Goldsmith wanted his, which is brilliant and beautiful, but I think Ridley Scott was right to request and go with the "spooky rewrite" of the opening music. Ridley Scott's audio commentary has lots of good info.

He's said in terms of movies his greatest influences were 2001, Star Wars, and some horror movies. RS was originally going to try and make a movie of Tristan and Isolde, but then walked into Star Wars shortly after the opening in 1977. He said he was stunned, and loved it, but then got depressed because he realized it was great and at times deep, but really connected with an actual audience. He wanted to do that too.

When he was hired, Fox wanted to make a very cheap horror film, with a production budget of $4 million. RS convinced them to make more of a prestige blockbuster, spending c. $11 million. That's about $40 million in today's money. But since all of the cast and the director himself were working on tight salaries, the money went pretty far. It's up there on the screen.