“Fencing is a science. Loving is a passion. Dueling is an obsession.” So says the promotional poster for 1977's “The Duellists,” which tells the true story of two Napoleonic officers who agreed to fight every time they saw each other for as long as they both survived.

The real-life vendetta began when an officer named Fournier took offense to a message delivered by another officer named Dupont. They fought a duel to resolve the issue, but it was inconclusive. Most duelists of the era would have been satisfied to leave it at that, but instead these two made a pact to fight every time they were of equal rank and close enough to meet each other. They actually fought more than thirty times using every weapon available in that era including smallswords, cavalry sabers and pistols, but they were both so skilled that they just couldn't manage to kill each other.

Joseph Conrad later wrote a short story based on this feud, and changed the names of the officers to Feraud and D'Hubert. The movie was based on the story, so it uses those names instead of the real names of the two officers. Fans of swashbuckling movies consider the fight choreography in this movie to be among the best and most historically accurate of any swordfighting film. Due to the sheer number of duels the two men actually fought, the movie is only able to show a few of them, but every sword fight in “The Duellists” has the energy and the intensity of raw violence with sharp blades.