let's talk about this absolutely brilliant sword fight from the court jester and also
why one of the greatest fencing actors of all time still needed a stunt double for
this scene the Court Jester is a 1955 musical comedy starring Danny Kaye and Basil Rathbone
and Angela Lansbury and Glynis Johns and the pellet with the poison's in the vessel
with the pestle The Chalice from
the palace has the brew that is true! just remember that. it is so very very quotable
I thought I'd never seen it but as soon as I heard the pellet with the poison's in the vessel with
the pestle but the Chalice from the palace has the brew that is true I was like oh oh I have seen
it just clearly a very long time ago the reason everyone recommends it to me specifically though
is not because of the puns or the tongue twisters it is because of the climactic sword fight between
Hubert Hawkins and Sir Ravenhurst get it got it good
so and I know some of you have missed this before we explain the fight the plot it goeth
thusly there's a usurper on the throne and the baby boy who is the true king has been hidden
in the Woods by the Black Fox and his band of rebels the Black Fox is definitely not Zorro
or Robin Hood honest anyway Hubert Hawkins is an Entertainer for the rebels who wants
to do daring in her things and also get the girl but we need to overthrow tyranny first
if only we could have someone inside the castle an intimate of the king with access to his Chambers
spoiler they find him Giacomo the incomparable king of jesters and Jester of Kings Hubert ends
up posing as a court jester and gets embroiled in Shenanigans I'd like to get in get on with it get
it over with and get out get it got it
good including being hypnotized into seducing
the princess. these Shenanigans culminate in him becoming a knight and then fighting on Horseback
with a Mace and chain and then A Massive Action scene and then a very dramatic and comedic sword
fight one of the reasons it's dramatic and comedic is that the witch Griselda hypnotizes Hubert
on your feet not afraid you're the greatest with the blade
which would be great except all you have to do is [snap] that to get him to return it to his
original state back [snap] or back again which is why the fight is so much fun Hawkins spends half
of it gibbering like a clown and flailing with Terror not unreasonably and half of it beating
Ravenhurst easily so let's have a look we start with regular Hubert Hawkins he has just declared
himself to be the Black Fox he isn't and his buddies from the carnival have showed up to
save the day Hubert is running and jumping and leaving but oh no it's Ravenhurst! Ravenhurst does
a bunch of stabbing because efficiency my friends we're all about that and Hubert does a bunch of
desperate two-handed parrying because he's got no idea what he's doing and he's frightened and then
he tries to get away and as they come up the steps there are several repeated overhead cuts which are
amusing they're also sort of telegraphed but in a comedy fight like this you don't necessarily
have to worry about that too much is it funny yes then you're winning there follows more two-handed
blade wiggling as Ravenhurst tries to get around him and then bite him bite him Hubert use all of
your available weapons Hawkins! and then Hawkins is lifted up onto the battlements and off we go
again and then he falls down a hole and then we're back on the flat and then the witch gets
hold of him and his whole physicality changes no more desperate two-handed sword waving he's
cool calm confident he doesn't really bother to move when he's fighting Ravenhurst in this first
phrase and then he goes on the attack and there's a lot of power there uh we'll come back to that
thought but there's a lot of power there he is overpowering Ravenhurst very easily and then he
has Ravenhurst cornered but he stops to monologue and whoops maybe shouldn't have done that now
we've had a change of character let's have another change of scenery we go inside there are table
Shenanigans Hubert hides behind the curtain we'll see whose life isn't worth that [snap] and then we
change back again we fight drink Hubert Hawkins once again easily beating ravenhurst [candles!]
Very oops we change the environment again and run out into an enclosed space jumpy jumpy leap
this is pure ridiculousness and he should have died at least four times in this sequence but
it's hilarious so obviously we'll let it slide he runs away and goes down the stair slide where he
meets Jean they are both threatened by Ravenhurst and we're done in a fight like Wesley vs Inigo or
Inigo versus Count Ruben or Zorro versus literally anyone in any Zorro movie ever you have consistent
characters while the tension in the fight may rise and fall there's a clear throughline of intention
characters start out wanting one thing and they continue to want that thing for the whole fight.In
this fight you never know when we're going to snap Hawkins from bumbling fool who's just trying to
get away to the greatest with a blade and because his intentions swing back and forth so wildly it's
hilarious to watch Ravenhurst obviously just wants to kill the guy but he keeps having to adapt to
this dude who is fighting him but also just seems to be losing it? They add interest to the fight by
giving you a range of environments they give you a range of emotions they give you danger they give
you humour they give you this amazing physical performance by Danny Kaye really it's got it all
one of the things I like best about the fight aside from its inherent ridiculousness is the
ending. First because they win as a group not with a single person swooping in to save everyone and
second they win with Hubert Hawkins as himself not the master of the blade it would have been
much less narratively satisfying if they had won while Hubert was hypnotized because he's
not really himself in that state so the real Hubert is absolutely terrified but his whole
arc in the movie is about becoming brave and getting to take a stand against tyranny and
making himself useful and what we learn going with him on this journey is that being friendly
and cheerful and good with babies all of these are good and positive attributes having allies
is a good thing you don't have to do it all on your own Hawkins does not want to be the
baby King's babysitter but he does it because the Black Fox tells him to and he wants to help he's
willing to do things he either doesn't want to do or is genuinely terrified of doing and that
is what makes him a good person and a character that we root for. It's also important and quite
sweet I think that he fancies the Captain and she also fancies him before he becomes Hubert Hawkins
greatest with the blade or the Court Jester before he does any of the impressive things Jean still
likes him his arc isn't about proving himself to her it's about becoming more of the man that he
wants to be and also removing the obstacles which are preventing them from being together and I know
I'm making a video about this fight but the thing about it is it stands perfectly well on its own
you don't need to know extra things about it to appreciate it properly but if you are into fight
choreography then hi welcome and here are a couple of extra things which you might find interesting
if you're a screen combat aficionado then you probably already know that Basil Rathbone was
very handy with a blade the Court Jester is his last cinematic sword fight and you can tell that
he's an excellent stage fighter and an excellent fencer you can tell he's an excellent stage
fighter because of the way he reacts to things in the fight. Selling things in stage combat is all
about the reactions you have to make your partner look good and hopefully they're trying to make you
look good and then everybody looks great so every time Ravenhurst checks or shuffles or stabs all of
his facial expressions everything he does is meant to sell Danny Kaye either as a credible threat to
him or as a bumbling fool that Ravenhurst is very confused by and every time Danny Kaye runs or
leaps or reacts he's trying to sell basil Rathbone as the terrifying sir Ravenhurst or as Ravenhurst
who definitely isn't a credible threat to him in the sections where he's been hypnotized. You can
tell Rathbone is a decent fencer by looking at his feet, by his precision and because it's actually
quite difficult to tell when we've swapped to the double. I mean obviously it is those times
where you can't see his face but while Ralph Faulkner tends to be a little bit more upright
in posture the difference between Rathbone and Faulkner isn't so huge that it's obvious. Ralph
Faulkner who was in charge of sword fighting for the film was a fencer and he taught Danny
Kaye but Danny Kaye only had a few weeks to learn the sword choreography and so you're thinking to
yourself but then why was there a double why did they use Ralph Faulkner as the double? I'm sure
many reasons but you know what let me tell you a thing I've been doing stage combat for almost five
years now and the least frightening people for me to fight are people who've been doing stage
combat a long time and/or people who have a lot of experience in martial arts. I do not care if my
stage combat partner is a head and a half taller than me or built like a brick outhouse if they
know what they're doing because people who have experience in this particularly if they're a lot
bigger than everybody else are used to treating the people around them as kind of squishy and
breakable. Someone who knows what they're doing is not going to have a problem dialing it back you're
not worried that they're gonna punch you in the face or drop you on your head or whatever. People
who are absolute beginners at stage combat tend not to be very frightening either because they're
quite afraid of hurting people they tend to be hesitant because they are rightly concerned that
they don't want to impale somebody with the sword you often have to gently encourage them
to hit you harder but it's fine. Danny Kaye is a large fit strong man Basil Rathbone said when he
was fighting him that he was probably one of the most physically capable people he'd ever worked
with but he also had less than a month to learn the sword work and I suspected while watching him
with my stage combat goggles on so to speak that he might not have had the sword control necessary
to make things safe. And people who are very physically capable but don't quite know how not
to hurt you that's very unnerving to work with. When he's fighting Faulkner in those sections you
can see that he's really going for it and there's an art to looking like you're hitting people as
hard as you can without actually hitting them as hard as you can but I wasn't entirely sure he'd
got the hang of that and uh I'm... I may not have been wrong about that this is a quote from the
book it came from Horrorwood and it's from Michael Pate who played Sir Loxley in the court Jester "I
remember Basil Rathbone having his whole wig cut right up the middle by Danny Kaye on the court
jester; Danny did a couple of leaps forward unexpectedly and bounced the epee right off
Basil's forehead right through to the back of his head it cut straight through his wig and into his
pate as a matter of fact I don't remember whether there were stitches but there was quite a lot of
blood where the epee grazed the top of his head." Okay so first of all things do happen but second
of all I would bet that Basil Rathbone never did that to anybody because he had much better
control. As one of my teachers likes to say you've only got two goals with stage combat one be safe
to be convincing that's it. To be safe you need to have control if Rathbone and Kaye aren't safe to
fight each other for whatever reason then you've got to change it to make it safe which they did!
Danny Kaye had been practicing with Ralph Faulkner he was used to Faulkner Faulkner was used to him
they could go as fast as they liked easy fix! All this to say this scene is amazing but it
took Kaye and Rathbone and Faulkner and possibly Danny Kaye's stunt double for falling over tables
if he had one of those to make it happen. People have limits but you can work around those limits
and still make amazing stuff get it got it good happy half a million subscribers see you all soon