Lights, Camera, En Garde: How Hollywood and Fencing Have Always Been in Love
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by Bryan Wendell
A worker holds "Anduril," a prop sword belonging to Aragorn, hero of "The Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy.
He has been hunting the man who killed his father for 20 years. He has finally found him. He raises his sword.
"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
If that line brings back memories, you're not alone. For many, perhaps including you, it was even the reason you tried fencing in the first place.
Fencing and film have been intertwined for more than a century. When Douglas Fairbanks hired a fencing master to choreograph The Mark of Zorro in 1920, he created something new: a movie swordfight that actually looked like fencing. What followed was a golden age of fencing and film with names like Errol Flynn,Tyrone Power and The Three Musketeers.
By 1987, Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin had trained for months under choreographer Bob Anderson to film what many consider the greatest sword fight ever put on screen.
The tradition runs right through to today. James Bond fenced a villain on an electric strip in Die Another Day. Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones turned a lesson in positions into one of cinema's most charged scenes in The Mask of Zorro. A galaxy far, far away built an entire mythology around a weapon that owes its DNA to the fencing strip.
And a generation of fencers will admit that The Parent Trap or iCarly or even Wednesday on Netflix was their gateway into the sport.
Now, as Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, USA Fencing is working with the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and LA28 to bring that story to life in a way it has never been told before: a dedicated showcase celebrating fencing's long, luminous relationship with film.
To make it exceptional, we need your help.
We are looking for artifacts connected to iconic fencing films: props, costumes, signed memorabilia, production equipment, posters, photographs. If you have a piece of this history, and you would be willing to place it in the hands of world-class curators for a global audience, we want to hear from you.
The story of fencing and Hollywood is long overdue for its close-up. Help us tell it.
