Also from Rob Roy, when Rob “fights” the drunken bravo in the tavern.
“Do we fight to first blood?”
“Aye.”
<Knicks his thumb on the bravo’s blade>
“You win.”
my favorite sword fights are in crouching tiger, hidden dragon. lien vs jen yu, li mu bai vs jade fox, and jen yu vs the bar in the woods! those are good stuff
Nice call.
Some of my favorite fights are in Scaramouch staring Stewart Granger. The final sword fight was the longest on film until recently.
Kill Bill
The Bride v The Crazy 88
As far as “realism” goes, I’d have to nominate the final fight of Costner’s Robin Hood. They weren’t using finesse and artistry. It was two people with broadswords in cramped quarters swinging the hell out of their steel, jumping out of the way of the other’s attempted blows, and trying to use stuff in the room to block or obstruct.
Another vote for Luke Vs. Vader in Return of the Jedi. A lot of it had to do with the music, and it was all very raw and brutal. Revenge of the Sith gets an honorable mention in the SW series with Ben vs. Anakin, but it lacked something that the other fight had.
From the Hornblower movies, I’d like to say the melee on the beach from Loyalty, although that one also included quite a bit of guns and one instance of someone being beaten with a belt. Lots of good sword fighting involved, including one of Hornblower’s midshipmen fighting against the traitor, despite being obviously outmatched.
This is my choice. The combatants were in one of two modes:
- I’ma KILL him!
and
- AHHH!!! Get away from me!
Depending on what was going on. On defense they put anything between them and their opponent. On offense it was the reverse. Awesome.
If you’re looking for realism, it probably doesn’t get much more realistic than the final sword fight in Akira Kurosawa’s Tsubaki Sanjuro.
It’s not just a realistic fight, it’s also really, really good film-making.
Same character, same director, different film, still great film-making: the final stand-off in Yojimbo. Notable for the entirely believable and all-too-rare show of cowardly panic.
IMHO, the fencing scene in “Mark Of Zorro” is what other movies are shooting for: there’s a lot of blade-on-blade flynning, but it works because each man really looks like he’ll go for an honest-to-god killing thrust just as soon as he can get the other guy’s sword out of the way – and so keeping your own sword in the other guy’s way is the primary concern, and so they both keep going for quick little shots at and around the other guy’s weapon in secondary hopes of getting that opening.