Sherlock Holmes movie update

Since our early September update, the Bartitsu Society has been in contact with the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie production and has donated copies of both volumes of the Bartitsu Compendium to the project.  Of course, this does not mean that what appears in the move fight scenes will be verbatim Bartitsu, but it’s nice to know that the fight team has access to authentic historical sources for use as inspiration.

Guy Ritchie (left) practicing Brazilian Jiujitsu

In an October 7 interview with aintitcool.com, director Guy Ritchie said:

I like the idea that (Holmes is) as visceral as he is intellectual.  It’s true to the origins of the narrative.  He was a martial artist.  He did something called Bartitsu, which wasn’t necessarily exposed or utilized in other productions.  So we’ve made more of a meal out of that. He’s an intellectual action man, which is pretty consistent with his origins.

Basic Bartitsu demo. at ISMAC ‘07

This footage was recorded at the International Swordfighting and Martial Arts Conference in Michigan, USA, between July 12-15, 2007.  It features a series of mostly canonical Bartitsu unarmed combat and cane demonstrations by myself, with Kirk Lawson assisting.

The theme of the seminar was to use a small selection of canonical and some neo-Bartitsu techniques and sequences to explore two major principles:

1) alignment control, or using your own weight and skeletal structure to disrupt the opponent’s balance and 2) initiative control, either by inviting a particular attack or by executing a pre-emptive attack to control the opponent’s options and movement.

Thus, we were primarily using these sequences as academic examples of certain technical and tactical options, rather than as self defence or competition sequences per se.

The defence between 00.56 and 01.00 is a neo-Bartitsu improvisation combining a number of techniques (palm-heels, a trachea grab, low stamping kick etc.) to reinforce the theme of controlling the opponent’s balance and skeletal alignment.

Thanks to Bartitsu Society member Chris Amendola for editing the footage.

Bartitsu Promotional Clip from Chris Amendola on Vimeo.

On the arts of Bartitsu

There is a tendency for those looking at Bartitsu to pay especial attention to the jui-jitsu parts of it, and to discount the necessity of both boxing and savate skills. As Tony reminded us in a recent post to the mailing list, Barton-Wright’s lecture to the Japan Society raised this very point:

In order to ensure as far as it was possible immunity against injury in cowardly attacks or quarrels, they must understand boxing in order to thoroughly appreciate the danger and rapidity of a well-directed blow, and the particular parts of the body which were scientifically attacked. The same, of course, applied to the use of the foot or the stick.