next 19 years in which the two officers fought mounted and on foot with swords, sabres, and pistols. After l'Étang finally bested Fournier-Sarlovèze in a duel, he told him to leave him alone for good. Fournier-Sarlovèze died aged 53; l'Étang lived till he was 74. Although Vaughan-Hughes screenplay used many elements from The Duel, it created new scenes like the duels at the start and the end of the film and new characters. Filming Many exteriors were shot in and around Sarlat-la-Canéda in the Dordogne region of France. The winter scenes set during the retreat from Moscow were shot in the Cairngorms of Scotland, near Aviemore. The final duel scene was filmed at the unrestored Château de Commarque. The last scene references paintings of the former emperor in his South Atlantic exile (e.g. Napoleon on Saint Helena by Franz Josef Sandmann). Critical reception The film holds a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 27 reviews, with an average score of 7.4/10 and the critical 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." Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote: "The movie, set during the Napoleonic Wars, uses its beauty much in the way that other movies use soundtrack music, to set mood, to complement scenes and even to contradict them. Sometimes it's all too much, yet the camerawork, which is by Frank Tidy, provides the Baroque style by which the movie operates on our senses, making the eccentric drama at first compelling and ultimately breathtaking." Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote, "The Duellists is an epic yarn; we sit back and observe it, and it's consistently entertaining—and eerily beautiful." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "The story might have worked if there were an undercurrent of attractiveness to Keitel's loutish character. But he is an unwavering boor from start to finish, and his prowess with weapons is in no way redeeming." Variety wrote that Ridley Scott "does have an eye for fine compositions, period recreation and arresting tableaus. But it is somewhat surface and too taken up with poses… it rarely illuminates the deeper human aspects of these two flailing men." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the sword fights were "the best I've ever