During these times when Spielberg has appointed himself official guardian of Holocaust survivors, and has forgotten how to make small scale films, it is salutary to remember that he was once one of the best directors in what some of us think was the "Golden Age" of American film-making.
"Duel" is the first in a series of films made by Spielberg which really showcase his talents. He is not a great dramatic director - his serious films are preachy, self-conscious and grossly overscaled. But, god, the man is a great entertainer when he tries to be. "Sugarland Express" is a witty, subtle road movie that has a stunningly powerful conclusion. "Jaws" is the best blockbuster Summer movie ever made. "CE3K" is a dose of pure joy, summed up by the look of elation on Truffaut's face at the end. "1941" is overlong and patchy, but contains some of the most incredible set-pieces I've ever seen in a film, and is much more interesting as a film than "The Blues Brothers", which is similarly overstuffed (and which, by the way, makes the worst use of Aretha Franklin that I can imagine - why the hell do they take Matt Murphy when they could have left him and taken the Goddess ?)
"Duel" was his first big success - not his first professional film, as some sources claim. His feature length "Columbo" episode was made in 1971. "Duel" was his first film as solo director to appear in cinemas in Europe, and was certainly the film that got him marked as a director to watch. Watching it again, two things stand out. Firstly, the sheer talent which is evident in every single frame. Secondly, the absence of later Spielberg traits, those which drag down his films in the eighties and nineties.
The story of "Duel" is classically simple. A man, called Dave Mann, is driving to a meeting through the Californian desert - the film was shot on a fifteen mile stretch of Highway 14. He encounters a huge truck, which he overtakes. He then allows the truck to pass him and is unnerved by the sheer bulk of the machine. All seems normal, except that the truck won't speed on ahead of him and remains close, choking him with fumes. Then the truck prevents him from overtaking, until an arm waves him past - into the path of an oncoming car.
A primal story of man versus machine ? Well perhaps, except Spielberg complicates things by introducing one of his favourite early themes - the perceived inadequacy of the modern male. Mann is listening to a radio phone-in, where a man is complaining that he has to stay at home and keep house. He later has a phone conversation with his wife, who complains that he is not agressive enough and that he let her be "virtually raped" by one of his friends at a dinner party, without intervening and knocking the man for six. Dave Mann is beset not only by the truck, but also by his notions of what he should be, but isn't. A later confrontation with a truck driver, when Mann gets decked, proves the point to him - he just isn't macho enough. Except ... well, except that such things don't seem to matter. What could any man do when faced with this fume-spouting monolith ? Spielberg - no macho man himself - gives the answer when Mann finds he can only defeat the truck by beating it in a battle of wits.
The truck is one of the great monsters of horror cinema. Seemingly banal in its ordinary appearance, it grows more sinister the more that Spielberg's camera observes it. Indeed, it's very _lack_ of anything unusual becomes suspicious. By the end, the front of the truck has apparently grown character and looks malicious and greedy. The headlights become eyes, constantly watching, waiting for Mann to make a single mistake. The truck is one of the great examples in cinema of a motiveless malignancy. It doesn't seem to want anything except to destroy it's chosen victim - where it comes from, why it is doing this; neither question is addressed by Spielberg, who wisely realises that the less we know, the more intrigued we are.
The truck driver is never wholly seen, but his presence is established through small details - the waving hand, the cowboy boots. He could be anyone, a fact that Spielberg plays upon in a triumphant suspense scene in a truck stop, when Dave Mann starts to believe that he has found his tormentor. We are so skilfully sucked into the nightmare, that we share his paranoia. The scene concludes in a punch-up, and then a funny-unnerving coda.
If there is a weakness in this film, it is Dennis Weaver. He's an efficient actor, but rather uninspired - he plays this role exactly the way he played every other role. He's professional, but he doesn't have the comic spark of lunatic terror that, for example, John Lithgow brought to "Twilight Zone". There's a lovely scene towards the end when Dave Mann is roped into assisting a school bus, while the truck mockingly observes his discomfort. But Weaver doesn't seem to get the joke, and his reaction to the mocking children at the back of the bus is simply embarrassment.
The ending, however, is marvellous. Having arrived at the edge of a mountain, Dave Mann adopts a matador pose, jumping off the car just in time for the truck to smash into it, and then career down the ravine. As the truck drops, we hear a wonderful groaning sound, that might possiibly be the truck screaming its last. Then, in what might be termed the twist, there seems to be no sign of the driver's mangled body. But we saw the driver ... didn't we ? The final image of Weaver, sitting, nowhere to go after his final victory, is potent and memorable.
Spielberg's early triumph in this film is still one of his most memorable achievements. That's not to belittle Richard Matheson's spare, ironic screenplay, but this is a director's film. Every shot is calculated to add to the final effect, and even the padding out, needed for the theatrical release, is engaging and characterful. The traits which are notably absent here are overlength and sentimentality. There is a cruel streak of comedy running through "Duel" which might have improved several of Spielberg's later films. There is not a single moment of false sweetness in this film - something which invaded Spielberg's technique in "ET" and which has never been overcome since. Think of that awful ending to "Amistad" or the glutionous saccharine sentiment that is all-pervading in "Hook" and "The Color Purple".
Could Spielberg make a film as clean and tight as "Duel" again ? Probably not, but he's not alone in . Martin Scorsese will never make another film as fresh as "Mean Streets" - and it would, perhaps, be unfair to expect him to. I just wish to Spielberg would stop being Saint Steven and go back to being the witty practical joker who made wonderful films about killer trucks, Great White Sharks and Generals who cry over Dumbo. That Spielberg, the one who is long gone, is summed up in the beautiful scene in "CE3K", when Roberts Blossom stands up in the briefing room, and testifies to having seen Bigfoot - and, dammit, we believe him. The new Spielberg may have God on his side, but he was much more fun when he had a bit of the Devil in him.
Mike
"Tchaikovsky - was he the tortured soul who poured out his immortal longings into dignified passages of stately music, or was he just an old pouf who wrote tunes ?"
Python: 1969 - 1999
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