The Long Duel

Watching The Long Duel put me in mind of the story of Joaquin Murietta from early American California days. At least it seemed that way to me as this story of the Himalayan frontier of India plays a lot like an American western.

Harry Andrews as the John Bull commander of a Himalayan outpost in the British Raj arrests an entire tribe for some specious allegations of poaching. Yul Brynner as tribal chief is among the arrested, but they break out with one fatality.

After that Brynner and the able members of the tribe become brigands and popular heroes in India where the Congress Party is getting most demanding for India's independence post World War I. The provincial governor Laurence Naismith is acutely aware that Brynner and his tribe are becoming popular heroes. Possibly this story is post the Amritsar Massacre which galvanized the move toward independence.

The solution they come up with is to give Andrews a co-commander in Trevor Howard. Howard before his army service was an anthropologist and has studied Indian culture. He's also suspected of the unpardonable sin of 'going native'. But he may be the answer to the Raj's Brynner problem.

Brynner borrows a lot here from his earlier work in Taras Bulba playing the tribal chief. Howard cuts a sympathetic figure as a most unmilitary officer showing his range. A Captain Bligh he is not. He even gets a love interest in Charlotte Rampling playing Andrews's daughter.

I thought the climax was a bit on the unreal side involving both Brynner's son and Howard. More I will not say.

The Long Duel is an interesting saga of those last days of the British Raj though it plays like a western with real Indians.

UK film industry, before the late sixties, has always showed this tradition of adventure films related to the British colonies, nearly in every continent. It is in the British cinema DNA, I mean IT WAS. This film is a real good one, splendid picture. You also had Basil Dearden's KHARTOUM, one year earlier. I don't forget CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE from director Tony Richardson, the most outrageous film ever made against the British establishment in colonies, showing the sumptuous parties from the British gentry, military high rank officers whilst poor soldiers are slaughtered on the battle ground...Yes, adventure films belonged, were a trademark, of the UK film industry, not only the Hollywood one, but I repeat, only, till the end of the sixties decade. The other fashion was the social, kitchen sink dramas; and of course comedies, war - which also finished in the late sixties - horror movies - thanks to Hammer films. Not westerns and a bit crime films, excellent ones. So, back to this one, the prestigious cast - Yul Brynner and Trevor Howard - helped to the success of the film, but the production design too. It is a must see in the genre, as was GUNS OF NAVARONNE. I prefer this one, because it was brave, daring from the British cinema to criticize its own colonialism system. Yul Brynner, the rebel, gets more empathy than Trevor Howard's character. One last thing, Harry Andrews has played in so many British movies of the fifties and sixties, even later, that when you did not see him in only one, you had the feeling he was dead.... Or in a very bad condition. Ha ha ha.

This has simply been unfairly misunderstood. It's a great romantic adventure story exposing conflicting mentalities in the last days of the Indian Raj, when some British already started to doubt their presence there. Harry Andrews is the hopeless imperialist who knows only one way to govern and that by force, while Trevor Howard tries the other way: dialogue and understanding. Yul Brynner is the freedom fighter with a just cause who knows he is right and struggles against opposition in his own camp to achieve it with tragic results, due to the hardcore inflexibility of the British military authorities (Harry Andrews). Charlotte Rampling plays an unusual part as a female diplomatic intermediary, and her character is the only one who is not quite convincing, which unfavourable impression is worsened by her horrible hair style - utterly impossible in India.

Additional merits of the film is the overwhelming sweeping landscape scenes catching the wilderness of the Himalayas, and the music, which underlines and augments the romantic character of the film. Yul Brynner is always interesting and makes memorable characters, and also Trevor Howard and Harry Andrews are well up to their ordinary excellent standard, while the story and its lesson of experience, wisdom and humanity is the main importance of this very underrated film.

"Sultan" (Yul Brynner) leads his largely peaceable tribe as the days of the Raj increasingly impose themselves on their day-to-day living. Imprisoned after a raid, they manage to break out of the fort but one of their guards is killed, This serves to galvanise the Governor (Maurice Denham) to appoint a solider tasked with apprehending this man before his disorder spreads. To that end he engages the rather unpopular but effective "Capt. Young" (Trevor Howard). What now ensues are a series of cat-and-mouse escapades as each man vies for the upper hand. The story of a principled man fighting for freedom against the oppressor is quite effective and both Brynner and Howard are on reasonable form as the two characters begin to respect each other, but the rest of the cast - especially the sterile Harry Andrews as "Stafford" and the even more curiously cast Andrew Keir as the turban-clad "Gungaram" - rather let the thing down. The (Spanish) location photography adds richness to the story and there is enough action to help us overlook a rather implausible romance between Howard and "Jane" (Charlotte Rampling) and the rather wordy dialogue that dogs this otherwise adequate costume drama. It ends in rather an underwhelming, if optimistic, fashion but I like the genre and this is perfectly watchable - just a bit long and not very memorable.

I saw this as a boy on its first release. It was supported by Eric Sykes' much shorter, mainly silent comedy, THE PLANK, still recalled today while DUEL soon vanished into obscurity. I enjoyed it at the time, but then all the scenery and action in colour on the big screen seemed marvellous in those days of black and white TV.

This is similar to several films of a decade earlier, notably Terence Young's ZARAK (1956) which had stony-faced Victor Mature playing the titular rebel, though Yul Brynner and his gang of mostly 'browned-up' British character actors generally do a more efficient job than their counterparts in the former production. DUEL is also set in a later period, the 1920s, reflecting a time in which the futility of British rule was becoming more apparent, but there is little that is overtly political here. Instead we get the collision of attitudes between hard-line authoritarian Harry Andrews and the liberal Trevor Howard, a familiar theme in everything from prison dramas to westerns. Both actors give their usual authoritative performances, all the more impressive given some of the uninspired writing. I always like Charlotte Rampling, but her appearance seems too modern for the time. There are lots of fights, ambushes and shoot-ups and it works on the level of a run-of-the-mill western, but who on earth came up with the idea of the cheesy pop song for the closing credits?