What makes a movie great? Superior acting, screenplay, or even the soundtrack can all help in elevating our movie-watching experience. But if we have to pick one crucial element that can make or break a movie, it has to be the direction. As the captain of the ship, the director is in a unique position of overseeing the entire production – from screenplay and art-direction to editing and publicity – and fitting all of it together like a jigsaw puzzle. ‘Duel’ – Steven Spielberg’s directorial debut, and one of his most underrated film – is a monumental achievement and a sign of things to come for one of world’s most famous directors. Spielberg’s name is known to everyone across multiple generations. From ‘Jaws‘, ‘E.T. The Extra Terrestrial‘ and the Indiana Jones movies (Gen X) to ‘Jurassic Park‘, ‘Schindler’s List‘ and ‘Saving Private Ryan‘(Millennials), all the way up to ‘The Terminal‘, ‘Munich‘ and ‘Lincoln‘ (Gen Z), Spielberg has left an indelible mark across movie fans all over the world. But there was a time when studios didn’t line up at his doorstep for his services and he had to prove himself in the industry. ‘Duel’ – a made-for-TV movie for ABC – was his big break and the rest is history. It is always educational to revisit the early work of any great artist and learn the influences and witness the evolution in style over the years. In Spielberg’s own words, he was “so hungry, ambitious and thankful for the opportunity back then that I was able to make the movie on-location in 13 days! Today it would be impossible to get these shots.”. The result is a fast-paced thriller that takes hold of the audience from the get-go and doesn’t ease up on the accelerator.
Simply put ‘Duel’ is a tale of road rage gone horribly wrong. A car encounters an ominous-looking, slow-moving truck on a one-lane California highway. The heavily polluting truck is annoying at first – making overtaking difficult for the car when ahead and tailgating the car in a threatening way if overtaken. Though what begins as a mild annoyance soon devolves into a serious chase with life and death implications. Spielberg makes use of a few common road-trip situations like gas station breaks, cafes and broken down vehicles to his advantage to avoid the movie from getting monotonic. The driver does everything in his control – he asks for help, he tries calling the police, he evades the truck, slows down and accelerates his car but at one stage we are left with the realization that there’s simply no respite from the danger that lurks around us. The truck’s coming for us; the only question is when and where. This cat and mouse chase leads to a thrilling and can’t-take-my-eyes-off conclusion that leaves us breathless and relieved once it’s all over.
Comments:
‘Duel’ begins with a first-person view of a car backing out of a garage and making its way onto Northbound I-5 and out of Los Angeles. Spielberg keeps us in this view for a long time – we see road signs, we see cars slowing down in traffic, cars cruising on the freeway, “us” exiting on to Highway 14 followed by some State Route. It’s almost like watching Pixar Animation Studios’ ‘Cars’ where the cars have a mind of their own. It will be a full 5 minutes before we see the driver who is driving “our” car. It’s a great way to put us in the passenger’s seat for the thrilling ride that’s soon to follow.
The Hitchcock-like treatment of the movie reminds one of ‘Psycho’ or ‘Birds’. Spielberg ratchets up the tension very quickly and maintains it consistently throughout the movie, The audio track largely consists of the talk show radio stations inside the car until the first break in action at the gas station. But things escalate very soon and the normalcy of the radio track is replaced by the ominous rattling and rumbling of the truck.
Dennis Weaver’s character’s initial attempts to find out the driver’s identity notwithstanding, we realize very soon that it’s the truck that’s intended to be the villain and not the driver. Spielberg was of the belief that the unseen is always more frightening than whatever one may throw at the audience. I feel the same way while watching any horror movie – and this is a movie where horror unfolds on the road. The tension can always be raised by great sound effects, camera work and editing.
In a film like this, every dialogue has to contribute significantly towards the setup of the movie and Spielberg does a masterful job in just a couple of short conversations that the car driver (played by Dennis Weaver) has – one with the gas station attendant regarding the radiator hose issue that later comes back to haunt him and another mildly frustrating one with his wife (over the phone) setting up the urgency. Spielberg also subtly reinforces the implicit nature of the audience’s relationship (passenger) with the driver in the café scene by mirroring our own thoughts with his – the whole thing is very perplexing to the driver and he has a lot of questions with few answers.
*#*#* Mild Spoilers Ahead *#*#* (Skip)
All is not bizarre though. The truck does seem to have a few rules in this dangerous game. It’s waits or comes back for the victim when the victim is languishing behind for a long time. It destroys anything and scares away anyone else who may get involved in the game. And finally, the game is not personal. So on a couple of occasions when the car driver tries to walk up to the truck, it simply drives away. All these characteristics go a long way in establishing the psychopathic character of our unique villain. So when the end finally comes for the massive beast and it ends up in a pool of oil, we breathe a sigh of relief when the tire finally stops spinning.
One thing I must mention is that I realized that I did not know the name of the protagonist (David Mann) until the end-credits started rolling. He does mention it once to a telephone operator but the tension is so high at that point, that you are just worried about the safety of the character. As he mentions his name to the operator, we see that the truck is hurtling towards the phone booth at a high speed ready to knock it off. But David Mann just escapes in the nick of time. Dennis Weaver did this stunt on his own and although it was rehearsed and deemed safe with multiple fail-safe options in place, it looks terrifying in the movie.
*#*#* End Spoilers *#*#*
Cast and Crew:
Spielberg was a big fan of Dennis Weaver’s role in ‘Touch of Evil‘ – an Orson Welles’ masterpiece. He was targeted for this role from the very beginning and Spielberg wanted him to reprise his paranoia from ‘Touch of Evil’ towards the end of this movie. As the lone actor with major screen-time but very few dialogues, Weaver does a great job.
Richard Matheson’s script is what drew Steven Spielberg to this movie. It was a tight script with a unique villain and masterfully translated to the big screen. Jack Marta’s cinematography is stunning and takes us uncomfortably close to the action.
The real star of the movie is the oil truck. Spielberg does a great job of establishing the character of the truck and not the driver. He uses different camera angles to highlight the dark brown paint, the oil spills all over, the thick smoke bellowing from the chimney and the large “FLAMMABLE” letters painter across its back – all signs indicating that this is something not to be messed with. Through some great camera work, he makes the truck look even larger (by capturing just a part of it in the frame and making it appear very close to the car) and even faster (by capturing the moving truck against the sound barrier walls along the highway) than it actually is, thus heightening the threat. We also see license plates from several Western states all over the truck – an apparent reference to its stomping ground and the several victims that have been claimed.
But it is Steven Spielberg’s movie all the way. Spielberg was just 25 years old and starting out when he made this movie. He had been given a tight timeline of 10 days in which to finish the principal photography for this movie (he ran 3 days over). A couple of interesting tidbits – In the same shot with the phone booth, one can actually see Spielberg’s reflection in the glass, (I Initially thought there was another person waiting outside the booth) but due to the tight schedule, there was no time to go back and re-shoot the scene the next day since the booth was destroyed. A similar thing happened when they had to extend the movie to 90 minutes from the original run-time of 74 minutes. This was needed to make it into a feature-length movie in order to be released in European theaters. But the only truck they had was destroyed in the final scene. So they had to go back and look for another truck to shoot some additional scenes. These few mishaps notwithstanding, Spielberg’s directorial debut was a huge success that was watched by about 60 million people on ABC at the time of its release.
Final Thoughts:
Although rarely mentioned in the same breath as many of his colossal blockbusters that followed, ‘Duel’ remains a top-notch, edge-of-the-seat thriller that is enjoyable from start to finish.
Lights Camera Action 
Leave a comment