The Cliffs of Insanity Sequence The Princess Bride (1987)

What the cliffs are doing structurally

The Cliffs of Insanity sequence runs from beat 8 (the boat reaching the chalk face) through beat 12 (the duel concluding with Inigo unconscious but alive), about ten minutes of film. Within those ten minutes the picture executes its Commitment beat (the man in black climbing the rope by hand after Vizzini cuts it), introduces Westley as a character whose project the audience will track for the rest of the film, and stages the first of the three rising-action duels that demonstrate solo competence at peak.^b8b9

The location filming was done at the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland, with second-unit and close-up work on a constructed cliff-top set at Shepperton Studios. The Cliffs of Moher are approximately seven hundred feet high; the production filmed for four days on the headland in October 1986.

The climb is the Commitment beat

Vizzini saws through the rope at the top of the cliff. The trio above watches it fall. The man in black does not fall — he hangs by one hand, swings to a foothold on a chalk fissure, and starts climbing the cliff face by hand.^b9

The sequence is held longer than narrative economy strictly requires. The reason is structural: this is the moment Westley's project changes mid-sequence from following the kidnap party across the sea to engaging them directly. The man-in-black persona, designed for exactly this rescue, locks in here. Inigo's parallel commitment locks in in the same scene — he chooses to honor the climber with a fair fight instead of attacking him at the cliff edge or letting Vizzini drag him on.^b10

Adrian Biddle shot the climb in flat hard daylight with deep shadow under the chalk overhangs — a deliberately undecorative palette that lets the audience read the climb as a real physical effort rather than a fairy-tale set piece.

The negotiation of the rope

When the man in black is roughly halfway up the rock face and visibly slowing, Inigo calls down to him from the cliff edge. The exchange is one of the most-quoted scenes in the film for reasons that are easy to miss on first viewing — it is a small ratification of the code that will run the entire sequence.

"I do not suppose you could speed things up?" "If you're in such a hurry, you could lower a rope, or a tree branch, or find something useful to do." "I could do that. I have some rope up here, but I do not think you would accept my help, since I am only waiting around to kill you." "That does put a damper on our relationship." — Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin) and the Man in Black (Cary Elwes), The Princess Bride (1987)

Inigo eventually swears on the soul of his father, Domingo Montoya, that the stranger will reach the top alive. The man in black throws him the rope. The exchange is the film's first explicit invocation of the portable code of honor — the same code that will let Westley spare Inigo and Fezzik when he wins the duels.

The duel

The duel runs roughly four and a half minutes — long by modern action-cinema standards — and was filmed in long takes specifically so the audience could watch the actors fight without cutaways. Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin trained for several months under fight masters Bob Anderson and Peter Diamond. Both learned the entire choreography ambidextrously so the left-handed reveal could play in a single take. (The sequence is treated in detail on The Inigo Montoya Duel.)

The duel is mid-fight punctuated by the running technical commentary on the European masters — Bonetti's defense, Capo Ferro, Thibault canceling Capo Ferro, Agrippa countering everything. The references are genuine fencing terms, deliberately included by William Goldman in the novel as period pastiche; the film keeps the dialogue intact.

Why the sequence works

The sequence is the film's first sustained demonstration that the picture can be both unironic about its fairy-tale source material and absolutely committed to the physical reality of its action. The cliffs are real cliffs. The climb is filmed long. The duel is filmed long. The camera does not cut away. The audience accepts the fairy tale because the sequence is grounded in the kind of physical effort that fairy tales typically elide.

"The duel works because they're actually fencing. The climb works because there's actually a cliff. Reiner's directorial bet was that the audience would buy the romance once it had bought the cliff." — Cary Elwes, As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride (2014) (book, not available online)