A good fight should tell you something about the story and the characters. In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio is a fun-loving person while Tybalt is looking for revenge. The fight should represent that. I’ve just finished my 60th version of Romeo and Juliet and each one is different. Shakespeare is really cool because he just says, “They fight”, so I can do what I want.
The most important thing is to work together — one actor has to create the illusion of danger in the other. In modern acting fighting is a collaboration, in which if I throw a punch at you and it misses, you must make it look as if it hit.
It’s very hard to direct a fight to music, because when composers want to put music to a fight they’ll often do it rhythmically, but if a fight is rhythmic, there’s no excitement to it. It has to be syncopated. In Errol Flynn fights, the music of Erich Korngold always represented the emotion of the fight and not the rhythm of the fight. Because that would be a dance.
Usually in a film script there’s a description of what takes place in the fight. Film is so much easier than television, which is so much easier than theatre. I’m no longer top banana in movies, because you can do a lot with CGI and lightweight weapons and sound. It’s in the hands of the technicians. The moment The Matrix came out I thought, “That’s the end of my job.”
BH Barry is the fight director of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, broadcast live from the Metropolitan Opera in New York to selected cinemas across the UK today. metopera.org
Stag at Sharkey’s, 1909 (pictured above)
I did Golden Boy on Broadway, a musical about a boxer, and I used George Bellows’s painting as a reference point. The body shape of the modern fighter is very different to the early fighters, they were much more brutal, more savage. Modern fighters are more technical. What I like is the colour, the light on the muscles. There’s a sense of what it’s like to be in manly competition.
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Scaramouche, 1952
You know the big film fight scene is going to happen about half an hour before it does. Expectations are enormous, then suddenly it breaks loose and takes place all over the theatre, in the balconies, the corridors, and the execution of it is really quite spectacular. The storytelling through the fight is also excellent.
Rush Hour, 1998
This film is just fabulous. Jackie Chan is my hero when it comes to that kind of stuff. He makes me laugh, I’m amazed at his acrobatic abilities, I’m astounded by his martial arts, he is phenomenal.
Seven Samurai, 1954
The Japanese form of fighting hasn’t changed for something like 2,000 years; it upholds that tradition of fair play and accountability. Those actors performed those movements in character, in period, and there was a total believability to it. It was messy, the rain was a great idea — there are so many things to admire. Kurosawa brought to my attention how important a fight was to a movie. You cannot take any of those fights out without losing a big element of character or story.
Othello, 1965
This is Laurence Olivier’s Othello, but the fight scene is between Cassio and Montano. What the fight arranger, William Hobbs, did so brilliantly was that rather than just have Cassio wound Montano, which is the reason for Cassio’s demotion and key to the play, he had a bystander wounded, which brought it to a common level. With that one act, Bill made a statement about the spread of violence — it’s not necessarily just about the combatants.
The Great Race, 1965
I worked with the director Blake Edwards on Victor/Victoria; I think he was a filmic comic genius and the pie fight in this film is the best food fight. To have Tony Curtis walk through it in a white suit, it was a ticking clock. This one was special because you were just waiting for Tony’s clothes to get it.