This reminds me of a long standing puzzle I have: when I
first saw the original Star Wars, I almost had deja vu
at the ending scene with the ceremony on the platform.
It was an almost exact copy of a scene I had watched on
TV as a kid in the fifties, from an old B-movie swashbuckler,
a fast paced romp with rapier wielding heroes saving the
day at the last moment. I had a suspicion at the time
that if I could track down the original, I might find
a fair amount of SW had been cribbed from it, rather like
watching Gunga Din and then seeing Sergeants Three.
I do remember that the old movie had much impressed
the neighbourhood kids (who all tended to watch the
same dinner hour old movies, there were only four
stations to choose from then, after all), and led to
a lot of wooden sticks as rapiers activity the next
week, which of course was all in good fun until everyone
lost an eye. I thought I remembered the name of the
flick as being noted as "With Rapiers Flashing" on
the TV schedule at the time, which seems a highly
unlikely title, and in the internet era I spent quite
a while with search engines and IMDB to see if I
could find any hint of what it could have been, but
got nowhere. I would guess the original would have
dated from 1933 to 1953, but I rather think that
dozens of such films were cranked out per year in
those years, and only the most notable ones are now
still documented, so perhaps it is out of reach.