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By the Sword is a 1991 film starring F. Murray Abraham and Eric Roberts as world-class fencers. Directed by Jeremy Paul Kagan, this is the first feature film about fencing.

Plot

Template:Spoiler Roberts plays Alexander Villard, a former fencing champion who runs a highly competitive fencing school. One of his students describes him as "a freak who thinks he's living in the fourteenth century". Abraham plays Max Suba, who introduces himself as a fencing instructor. Villard initially gives him a job as a janitor, but Suba demonstrates that he can fence, and can teach. Villard is "arrogant but not unkind", and eventually gives Suba his chance. As Suba's style manifests, it conflicts with the Maestro's unforgiving approach. The clash of egos, and a shared past slowly revealed through flashbacks, results in a dramatic duel between the two fencers. Template:Endspoiler

Release

Although made in the U.S., the film was released in France under the title "Par l'épée" in October, 1992. It was shown in U.S. theaters in May 1993, and found its way to VHS in 1994 as a Columbia Tristar home video.

Reception

The film has received nearly opposite reviews. Roger Ebert says "the movie adds some supporting characters in order to show us things about fencing that we didn't know", yet another reviewer finds the minor characters "unnecessary" and "thinly drawn", so "the film suffers whenever the plot focuses on them". Although Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum says the film "suffers from overdone, mannerist performances by the two leads", another reviewer says "the key to this film resides in the performances by Eric Roberts and F. Murray Abraham". The film develops Suba's character in particular, revealing a past that "he seems unable to completely let go of." Ebert says of the lead actors: "they create characters much more interesting and dimensional than this thin screenplay really requires."

The most consistent point noted by in reviews is poor screenplay and directing. New York Times critic Vincent Canby calls the screenplay "nonsense", saying bluntly: "the screenplay is terrible, full of unfinished subplots and lines that appear to announce its essential aimlessness." Regarding one of the more important subplots, a critic wrote: "Sadly, Kagan a routine television and film director adds nothing to the intriguing notion of a man who's spent half his life in prison returning to the scene of his crime." Although one critic calls the many flashbacks "a further directorial flourish", they are still at best an "interesting idea that isn't really successfully pulled off." While the action sequences are "well handled", Canby says "the drama is fraught with anticlimax." Overall, the plot is full of "sports clichés" that could "as well have been about croquet", and is "a little too neat and obvious to really carry the material." As one review puts it: "Right down to the painful fencing-to-disco-music routine, this is embarrassingly fab."

References

1. ^ Jonathan Rosenbaum. "By the Sword". Chicago Reader. Retrieved 2007-04-25.
2. ^ "By the Sword". timeout.com. Retrieved 2007-04-25.
3. ^ Roger Ebert (May 14, 1993). "By The Sword". Retrieved 2007-04-25.
4. "Par l'épée". cinemotions.com. Retrieved 2007-04-25.
5. ^ "By the Sword". thespinningimage.co.uk. Retrieved 2007-04-25.
6. ^ Vincent Canby (October 22, 1993). "Review/Film; Fencing as Metaphor for Honor and the Lack Thereof". New York Times.
7. "By The Sword". Channel4.com. Retrieved 2007-04-25.

External links

• Internet Movie Poster Awards.com
• Reel.com
• RottenTomatoes

• 1991 films
• Action films
• Drama films