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Movie Sword (Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence)


vajo

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In my experience with actors,(and I do have some) you never, ever trust them with a real blade on set! Much more likely to be an alloy blade, and the chips produced by the sort of behaviour that justifies not giving

them real swords.

I was thinking the same thing, Dave! If its a repro, it's one of the best I've ever seen in a movie. The tsuba looks a little too thin, but the rest looks real - even what I can see of the fuchi, seems to look right,

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Some years ago I watched a documentary on Japanese tv about how costumes, wigs, swords, and other movie props for jidai-geki are made. The sword “blades” were made of wood (basically tsunagi), covered with kind of an aluminum foil, the “hamon” (if any) drawn in clear lacquer. A lot of work went into the koshirae, though, looking pretty convincing.

 

I remember that they also talked about a director (forgot the name, b/w movie era shortly after the war) who insisted on real swords in his movies, but that didn’t last for long; he had a hard time finding actors who were willing to work with him, and finally the union interfered.

 

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What is a prop sword? Replica?

 

Not quite a replica. In Lord of the Rings for example every main "character sword" had at least 3 versions. The "hero sword" which was a real functional sword, a "look alike" sword for situations where it might get trashed, and a "prop sword" made out of safe materials like rubber and or foam for combat scenes. (This is why..https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/19395/did-sandahl-bergman-lose-a-finger-during-the-filming-of-conan-the-barbarian)Vigo Mortensen got a certain notoriety for wearing and carrying his "Hero sword" at all times, so that it looked like a part of his daily life when on camera.

 

  He also bought and kept his stunt horse after filming.

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