3 minute read
Film Review - Duel
By TADHG CURTIN
Before he put people off swimming at the beach, Steven Spielberg made vehicles in your rear-view mirror the most ominous sight in his suspenseful, cracking debut, Duel (1971).
Steven Spielberg is one of the greatest cinematic masters of the last 50 years. One of the few names known both to critics and the ordinary guy on the street, Spielberg actually got his start on television. He launched his movie career by directing a made for television movie called Duel. Based on a Richard Matheson short story, Duel is such a simple premise. A business commuter is pursued and terrorized by the malevolent driver of a massive tractor-trailer.
Duel is one of the great made for television movies. They were a popular thing back in the day, a genre that operated between T.V. and cinema. They still exist in certain forms today - the hallmark channel for example. Nowadays, streaming seems to have overtaken them. Dennis Weaver is terrific as the poor the wrong driver on his commute. Jittery, paranoid, out of his wits - Spielberg had remembered his energetic performance in Orson Welle’s Touch of Evil. The action is fantastic. It works as one long chase movie with brief respites here and there. We never see the other driver throughout which makes it even more unnerving. They shot the chase sequences with a specially created camera car that was low to the ground - this same car was used to shoot Bullitt’s car chase three years before. Composer Billy Goldenberg implements a very unique music score that’s percussive and experimental which adds to the tension and chaos on screen.
The movie’s ending is utterly spectacular but for Spielberg it was only the beginning. Before Duel, Spielberg worked on the T.V. pilot of Rod Sterling’s The Night Gallery where he got to direct the legendary Joan Crawford. Crawford wasn’t keen on a director with little experience but she quickly recognised a great talent in Spielberg. She encouraged him to keep doing what he was doing, told him that Hollywood was always slow in recognising a true talent and pointed him out to the right people in the business. This solidified his reputation as a wunderkind and set him on his illustrious path to greatness.
Duel had a tremendous run on television and as a result, It was actually released as a feature length movie in Europe, with 20 minutes added to its screen time. Indeed, Spielberg can count himself amongst the many artists who could have remained unknown in their homeland if European critics hadn’t given the appropriate accolades.
Spielberg has said that he saw Duel as pure Hitchcockian suspense stating it was: “Psycho meets The Birds on wheels!” It’s that and then some. It’ll keep you hooked and possibly make you anxious the next time you’re driving on your own journey!
