Nice post, @asteroid, that was a really fun read! I've mentioned it before on Tildes, but I am a fencer (I fence foil) so I thought I'd give my opinions on some of the clips in the article. It is...
I've mentioned it before on Tildes, but I am a fencer (I fence foil) so I thought I'd give my opinions on some of the clips in the article. It is worth noting that I am a modern fencer (the stuff you see on the Olympics with the wires and lights and needlessly complicated rules) so I can't really comment on the accuracy of much of this, and I am also a foil fencer, so I don't have much to say on clips like the ones from Adorea and Born for the Saber (other than these are kickass scenes) because those fall more into the HEMA and saber respectively, and I don't really have the experience to comment on them.
The Princess Bride
I haven't watched The Princess Bride but it seems funny, I probably should. Modern foils are derived from the small sword, which is a variant of the rapiers they seem to be using in this scene. Modern foils and small swords lack the cutting edge of rapiers (instead intended for only thrusting attacks), I'll treat these rapiers as close enough to foils just because the masked guy wins off a thrust. The positioning of their feet when they aren't walking, jumping, flipping, swinging off branches, etc is actually fairly close to modern stances, holding an 'L'-like shape with the sword-arm foot forward, though most fencers nowadays generally sit lower. In terms of sword-work, there is way more blade contact than is probably necessary. I won't get into too specific details, but repeatedly hitting your opponents blade under current rules is a pretty good way for the opponent to be able to set something up against you. As much as I would love to be able to switch sword hands halfway through the bout, I am sadly hampered by a wire, a lack of a glove, and rules.
Rob Roy
You'd never see a foilist and a sabreur compete against each other in modern competition, mostly because the electronics aren't capable of dealing with two different weapons. Also, grabbing your opponents blade is definitely at least a red card, so points to the film for depicting a proud tradition of bad refereeing.
The Duellists
Pausing the beginning of a bout in order to sneeze definitely still happens nowadays. I think the blade movement in the main bout is a little wild, but I really like the practice bout that happens in the background in the beginning of the clip. The footwork, specifically some of the lunges are a little awkward, but its a movement that can be kind of strange if you have little/no practice doing it.
The Swan
What a great scene. What's being depicted is definitively an early version of modern foil, so I can talk more about how it relates to modern fencing, compared to other scenes in the list which are generally more in the lineage of classical fencing. Starting with visuals, quite a few elements have been retained over the years from these early days of modern fencing. Masks are, visually, mostly unchanged, as are the jackets they are wearing. When giving lessons, coaches still do wear a black vest made of a slightly more padded version of the jackets. The foils are also similar, with some differences. Not visible are changes made in the blade. While visually very similar, changes have been made over the years to foil blades for reasons such as safety and electrification. A few decades ago, I believe, foils started to be manufactured using different methods and materials so that when they break, foils now snap instead of shear, which can be deadly. The bell guard that the woman is using is shaped in an odd '8'; modern foils universally use a circular guard. Finally, the grip being used by the two is roughly a modern french grip. French grips are generally used by coaches giving lessons today, and also by beginners, but it is rarely used in modern competition. I must say, giving a lesson without a mask is a little shocking given modern safety standards. Most people do lessons nowadays in shorts or sweatpants, but will do actual bouting in knickers made of a similar material to the jackets. Back then, however, men usually fenced in normal trousers, and women in skirts, like those seen in the clip.
As for the footwork and bladework, a lot looks like earlier forms of modern fencing. The footwork being done by the woman is solid, and what you'd expect from someone at the beginner-intermediate level of foil today. The movement is a little stiff, probably because she's in... are those dress shoes? Ouch. On the bladework front, in one part of the scene her coach has her do 9 types of parries (parry prime, parry 2, parry 3, etc). These nine parries are still the terminology to this day, although some parries (namely 3 and 5) seem to have fallen largely out of favor. Most foilists today don't hold their back arm in that high position she does, and instead either let it dangle or hold it in a lower position. Overall this scene is a good look into what early foil looks like.
I'm never really sure how to end off needlessly long rants like this, so if you read all of this and got down to here I wish you a great day :p
Yes, you absolutely should! You won't regret it. It's incredibly charming, infinitely quotable, and is right up there in the rankings of my all-time favorite "kids" movies along with Labyrinth,...
I haven't watched The Princess Bride but it seems funny, I probably should
Yes, you absolutely should! You won't regret it. It's incredibly charming, infinitely quotable, and is right up there in the rankings of my all-time favorite "kids" movies along with Labyrinth, Neverending Story, Spirited Away, and Goonies.
Great writeup, especially from 360p! I'm a former foil-->saber fencer. I mostly avoided competitive events (lucky enough to have an open hobbyist group of varying talents for a time) and my...
Great writeup, especially from 360p!
I'm a former foil-->saber fencer. I mostly avoided competitive events (lucky enough to have an open hobbyist group of varying talents for a time) and my knowledge might be a bit shakey, but I'll mention a couple things for the non-fencer ~'er.
French grips are generally used by coaches giving lessons today, and also by beginners
A side benefit of French grips for beginners is they're a lot more forgiving for using a different hand if there's borrowed equipment. I'm a lefty and my first experience with epee was with a right-handed pistol grip, which is probably why I avoided epee.
I think French grips are also sometimes used in epee to extend range by holding the epee near the pommel, known as pommeling.
Most foilists today don't hold their back arm in that high position she does
Do you know if foilists are still taught that way, just to make a connection that when you lunge you do something with your arm to counter-balance?
I think her arm when parrying is also more extended than it should be. Epee doesn't have a notion of right of way, but saber and foil have rules for deciding who has priority that involves continuous, uninterrupted, and certain actions.
Non-sport fencing sometimes grounds rules of modern fencing like changing rules to reduce flicks, or requiring something you can say was an actual thrust/attack instead of just holding your blade at full arms-length and making contact after a couple seconds of it being out.
An arm close to your body gives you more force and less distance that's needed to travel. Intercepting a blade with the lower half or yours to the upper half of the other gives you a lever that makes it very easy to control. So you get some rules about arm retraction and what distinguishes a pro-active 'beat' vs., a successful defense.
Necroposting because I was going through my comments and realized I never actually responded to this like I planned to. That versatility is often why coaches use a French grip; it makes it easier...
Necroposting because I was going through my comments and realized I never actually responded to this like I planned to.
A side benefit of French grips for beginners is they're a lot more forgiving for using a different hand if there's borrowed equipment. I'm a lefty and my first experience with epee was with a right-handed pistol grip, which is probably why I avoided epee.
That versatility is often why coaches use a French grip; it makes it easier to switch hands mid-lesson to help train fencing against both hands. Your first exposure to epee using a wrong-handed pistol grip is a bit of a shame, epee is pretty fun (even if it is boring as hell to watch). Were you forced to fence right-handed or did you somehow hold it with your left hand?
Do you know if foilists are still taught that way, just to make a connection that when you lunge you do something with your arm to counter-balance?
It would definitely vary by club, but I wasn't really taught that way, and was just taught to do the modern arm-swinging motion. However, I think its not uncommon to make students who have a bad habit of covering the lame with their back hand do drills where their back hand is in that higher stance.
I think her arm when parrying is also more extended than it should be. Epee doesn't have a notion of right of way, but saber and foil have rules for deciding who has priority that involves continuous, uninterrupted, and certain actions.
An arm close to your body gives you more force and less distance that's needed to travel. Intercepting a blade with the lower half or yours to the upper half of the other gives you a lever that makes it very easy to control. So you get some rules about arm retraction and what distinguishes a pro-active 'beat' vs., a successful defense.
Her arm is probably extended too far in this clip for a good parry, but that's mostly a mechanical/technical issue than a right-of-way issue. Under the current interpretation of the rules, who gets right-of-way (e.g. beat vs parry-riposte) is determined by (most) (American) referees by relative strength; that is, when two blades come together, right-of-way is given to the fencer who appears to have hit their blade more strongly (although other factors, such as apparent intention and timing also play a role in a referee's call). An important component of determining who had a 'stronger' hit is where the blades come together. If one blade makes contact in the middle of their blade, and the other blade makes contact near the base of the blade near the guard, the fencer who's blade made contact near the base appears to have made 'stronger' contact. Similarly, if one blade hits near the tip, and the other blade hits with the middle, the blade hitting near the middle appears to be stronger. This is for foil by the way; I believe saber operates somewhat similarly but I'm not sure.
The Wikipedia link you shared about prise de fer is interesting. In my experience, I've only heard the terms prise de fer and opposition used, while the other terms are referred to by other names. The terminology is a bit different. Prise de fer specifically refers to holding the blade on the attack (as opposed to a beat, which is more of a tap on the blade in attack). Opposition is specifically a kind of counter-attack (counterattacks are actions taken without possessing right-of-way, essentially hitting without getting hit) where you simultaneously thrust the blade in a way that diverts the opponent's blade. Envelopment is just called a circular parry (i.e. circle 4, circle 6, etc.).
In conclusion: right-of-way is a hot mess, highly subjective, and the interpretation of the rules changes from year to year and region to region. It's also a lot of fun to learn (and not just because you get to stab people).
Sort of related: there's this lightsaber fight by Corridor where they specifically asked the fight choreographer to push the realism slider to the max. Thoroughly enjoyable (also the uncut version...
Related: Fechtbuch: The Real Swordfighting behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance (YouTube) (turn on subtitles) Kingdom Come: Deliverance is my favourite game of all time. In this video (produced by the...
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is my favourite game of all time. In this video (produced by the game studio, I believe), they document, describe, and demonstrate the realistic sword weapon fighting that they strove to put into their award-winning game.
I found the video utterly fascinating. One of the main takeaways I remember was learning that real weapon combat isn't so "arcadey" where the two combatants are as though they were bubbles with orbiting weapons. Rather, there is a lot of entanglement of limbs and weapons, of getting right into your opponent's space, and fighting in there, too. Wrestling, grappling, twisting of weapons, leveraging your weapon against the opponent's weapon, trapping his weapon or his arms, imbalancing the opponent, and so on. It was very much "MMA" (mixed martial arts).
You wrote the markdown backwards by putting the URL inside the [] and description inside () when it's supposed to be the other way around. It should be: [Fechtbuch: The Real Swordfighting behind...
Not sure what's up with Tildes' markdown parser
You wrote the markdown backwards by putting the URL inside the [] and description inside () when it's supposed to be the other way around. It should be: [Fechtbuch: The Real Swordfighting behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance](https://youtu.be/yxsNZ7XD_jQ)
Nice post, @asteroid, that was a really fun read!
I've mentioned it before on Tildes, but I am a fencer (I fence foil) so I thought I'd give my opinions on some of the clips in the article. It is worth noting that I am a modern fencer (the stuff you see on the Olympics with the wires and lights and needlessly complicated rules) so I can't really comment on the accuracy of much of this, and I am also a foil fencer, so I don't have much to say on clips like the ones from Adorea and Born for the Saber (other than these are kickass scenes) because those fall more into the HEMA and saber respectively, and I don't really have the experience to comment on them.
The Princess Bride
I haven't watched The Princess Bride but it seems funny, I probably should. Modern foils are derived from the small sword, which is a variant of the rapiers they seem to be using in this scene. Modern foils and small swords lack the cutting edge of rapiers (instead intended for only thrusting attacks), I'll treat these rapiers as close enough to foils just because the masked guy wins off a thrust. The positioning of their feet when they aren't walking, jumping, flipping, swinging off branches, etc is actually fairly close to modern stances, holding an 'L'-like shape with the sword-arm foot forward, though most fencers nowadays generally sit lower. In terms of sword-work, there is way more blade contact than is probably necessary. I won't get into too specific details, but repeatedly hitting your opponents blade under current rules is a pretty good way for the opponent to be able to set something up against you. As much as I would love to be able to switch sword hands halfway through the bout, I am sadly hampered by a wire, a lack of a glove, and rules.
Rob Roy
You'd never see a foilist and a sabreur compete against each other in modern competition, mostly because the electronics aren't capable of dealing with two different weapons. Also, grabbing your opponents blade is definitely at least a red card, so points to the film for depicting a proud tradition of bad refereeing.
The Duellists
Pausing the beginning of a bout in order to sneeze definitely still happens nowadays. I think the blade movement in the main bout is a little wild, but I really like the practice bout that happens in the background in the beginning of the clip. The footwork, specifically some of the lunges are a little awkward, but its a movement that can be kind of strange if you have little/no practice doing it.
The Swan
What a great scene. What's being depicted is definitively an early version of modern foil, so I can talk more about how it relates to modern fencing, compared to other scenes in the list which are generally more in the lineage of classical fencing. Starting with visuals, quite a few elements have been retained over the years from these early days of modern fencing. Masks are, visually, mostly unchanged, as are the jackets they are wearing. When giving lessons, coaches still do wear a black vest made of a slightly more padded version of the jackets. The foils are also similar, with some differences. Not visible are changes made in the blade. While visually very similar, changes have been made over the years to foil blades for reasons such as safety and electrification. A few decades ago, I believe, foils started to be manufactured using different methods and materials so that when they break, foils now snap instead of shear, which can be deadly. The bell guard that the woman is using is shaped in an odd '8'; modern foils universally use a circular guard. Finally, the grip being used by the two is roughly a modern french grip. French grips are generally used by coaches giving lessons today, and also by beginners, but it is rarely used in modern competition. I must say, giving a lesson without a mask is a little shocking given modern safety standards. Most people do lessons nowadays in shorts or sweatpants, but will do actual bouting in knickers made of a similar material to the jackets. Back then, however, men usually fenced in normal trousers, and women in skirts, like those seen in the clip.
As for the footwork and bladework, a lot looks like earlier forms of modern fencing. The footwork being done by the woman is solid, and what you'd expect from someone at the beginner-intermediate level of foil today. The movement is a little stiff, probably because she's in... are those dress shoes? Ouch. On the bladework front, in one part of the scene her coach has her do 9 types of parries (parry prime, parry 2, parry 3, etc). These nine parries are still the terminology to this day, although some parries (namely 3 and 5) seem to have fallen largely out of favor. Most foilists today don't hold their back arm in that high position she does, and instead either let it dangle or hold it in a lower position. Overall this scene is a good look into what early foil looks like.
I'm never really sure how to end off needlessly long rants like this, so if you read all of this and got down to here I wish you a great day :p
Yes, you absolutely should! You won't regret it. It's incredibly charming, infinitely quotable, and is right up there in the rankings of my all-time favorite "kids" movies along with Labyrinth, Neverending Story, Spirited Away, and Goonies.
It's just straight up my favourite movie. I also recommend watching it.
Great writeup, especially from 360p!
I'm a former foil-->saber fencer. I mostly avoided competitive events (lucky enough to have an open hobbyist group of varying talents for a time) and my knowledge might be a bit shakey, but I'll mention a couple things for the non-fencer ~'er.
A side benefit of French grips for beginners is they're a lot more forgiving for using a different hand if there's borrowed equipment. I'm a lefty and my first experience with epee was with a right-handed pistol grip, which is probably why I avoided epee.
I think French grips are also sometimes used in epee to extend range by holding the epee near the pommel, known as pommeling.
Do you know if foilists are still taught that way, just to make a connection that when you lunge you do something with your arm to counter-balance?
I think her arm when parrying is also more extended than it should be. Epee doesn't have a notion of right of way, but saber and foil have rules for deciding who has priority that involves continuous, uninterrupted, and certain actions.
Non-sport fencing sometimes grounds rules of modern fencing like changing rules to reduce flicks, or requiring something you can say was an actual thrust/attack instead of just holding your blade at full arms-length and making contact after a couple seconds of it being out.
An arm close to your body gives you more force and less distance that's needed to travel. Intercepting a blade with the lower half or yours to the upper half of the other gives you a lever that makes it very easy to control. So you get some rules about arm retraction and what distinguishes a pro-active 'beat' vs., a successful defense.
Necroposting because I was going through my comments and realized I never actually responded to this like I planned to.
That versatility is often why coaches use a French grip; it makes it easier to switch hands mid-lesson to help train fencing against both hands. Your first exposure to epee using a wrong-handed pistol grip is a bit of a shame, epee is pretty fun (even if it is boring as hell to watch). Were you forced to fence right-handed or did you somehow hold it with your left hand?
It would definitely vary by club, but I wasn't really taught that way, and was just taught to do the modern arm-swinging motion. However, I think its not uncommon to make students who have a bad habit of covering the lame with their back hand do drills where their back hand is in that higher stance.
Her arm is probably extended too far in this clip for a good parry, but that's mostly a mechanical/technical issue than a right-of-way issue. Under the current interpretation of the rules, who gets right-of-way (e.g. beat vs parry-riposte) is determined by (most) (American) referees by relative strength; that is, when two blades come together, right-of-way is given to the fencer who appears to have hit their blade more strongly (although other factors, such as apparent intention and timing also play a role in a referee's call). An important component of determining who had a 'stronger' hit is where the blades come together. If one blade makes contact in the middle of their blade, and the other blade makes contact near the base of the blade near the guard, the fencer who's blade made contact near the base appears to have made 'stronger' contact. Similarly, if one blade hits near the tip, and the other blade hits with the middle, the blade hitting near the middle appears to be stronger. This is for foil by the way; I believe saber operates somewhat similarly but I'm not sure.
The Wikipedia link you shared about prise de fer is interesting. In my experience, I've only heard the terms prise de fer and opposition used, while the other terms are referred to by other names. The terminology is a bit different. Prise de fer specifically refers to holding the blade on the attack (as opposed to a beat, which is more of a tap on the blade in attack). Opposition is specifically a kind of counter-attack (counterattacks are actions taken without possessing right-of-way, essentially hitting without getting hit) where you simultaneously thrust the blade in a way that diverts the opponent's blade. Envelopment is just called a circular parry (i.e. circle 4, circle 6, etc.).
In conclusion: right-of-way is a hot mess, highly subjective, and the interpretation of the rules changes from year to year and region to region. It's also a lot of fun to learn (and not just because you get to stab people).
Sort of related: there's this lightsaber fight by Corridor where they specifically asked the fight choreographer to push the realism slider to the max. Thoroughly enjoyable (also the uncut version in the making of).
Related: Fechtbuch: The Real Swordfighting behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance (YouTube) (turn on subtitles)
Not sure what's up with Tildes' markdown parser, but here's a clickable link: https://youtu.be/yxsNZ7XD_jQKingdom Come: Deliverance is my favourite game of all time. In this video (produced by the game studio, I believe), they document, describe, and demonstrate the realistic
swordweapon fighting that they strove to put into their award-winning game.I found the video utterly fascinating. One of the main takeaways I remember was learning that real weapon combat isn't so "arcadey" where the two combatants are as though they were bubbles with orbiting weapons. Rather, there is a lot of entanglement of limbs and weapons, of getting right into your opponent's space, and fighting in there, too. Wrestling, grappling, twisting of weapons, leveraging your weapon against the opponent's weapon, trapping his weapon or his arms, imbalancing the opponent, and so on. It was very much "MMA" (mixed martial arts).
--
By the way, this whole website (https://historicalfencer.com/) looks fascinating, too.
You wrote the markdown backwards by putting the URL inside the [] and description inside () when it's supposed to be the other way around. It should be:
[Fechtbuch: The Real Swordfighting behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance](https://youtu.be/yxsNZ7XD_jQ)Which results in:
Fechtbuch: The Real Swordfighting behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance
oops, right. Thanks.