DUEL
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1996 Shane R. Burridge
Duel (1971) 90m.
Not technically Steven Spielberg's film debut, as it began life as a TV-Movie, but it was expanded for theatrical release outside the US after Universal saw its box-office potential. Man-vs-truck story brings together powerhouse talents of young director Spielberg and fantasy writer Richard Matheson (they'd reunite for the TWILIGHT ZONE movie and AMAZING STORIES series). When David Mann (Dennis Weaver) passes a truck on a desert road the truck driver retaliates by passing him in turn. From there begins a murderous fight for ownership of the road. Weaver becomes an unwilling David to the truck's Goliath. Most fascinating element of this film is that we don't really question the unseen truck driver's motivation. This is because Matheson's sharp but simple story works almost entirely on a primal level: territorial dominance and the battle for survival. Despite millennia of evolution the human brain still retains the instinct of the hunt. Mann is quite obviously Man, and his blood-red car is as nondescript and generic a vehicle as you would find. The truck, on the other hand, is an amalgam of different archetypal beasts - it is a smoke-belching dragon (which appears to be waiting in its cave at one point when it turns its headlights on), a lumbering mammoth (witness its animal bellow at the film's conclusion), and, it has been suggested, a precursor to the shark in JAWS (we see menacing POV shots as it glides towards its prey).
This is the production that really got studio heads taking notice of Spielberg, and it's fun watching him at work. As every frame was storyboarded it makes an ideal piece for perusal by film students. Extra footage for the cinema version includes scenes with a bus and a railway crossing (although in retrospect I find these don't work as well as the more basic cat-and-mouse bullying on the open road). Weaver, best known for his cowboy detective McCloud, is an unusual but effective choice for the role of the bewildered, victimized motorist. Story is not too far removed from a Western anyway - there is a desert setting, a bar fight, a cowboy-booted villain (the only glimpse we really get of him), a collection of licence plates on the truck's grille (in the manner of notches on a gun holster), a basic good-vs-evil challenge to the death. Instead of guns, the protagonists use the next most significant instrument of murder in civilized culture - their vehicles. It may get you thinking about the highways the way JAWS got you thinking about the beach. Even though it was intended for television, film's pacing and tension is hurt by ad breaks. Rent it or tape it.
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