Monday, October 24, 2016

Ten Days of Terror!: Duel

Film: Duel
Format: DVD from Seneca Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

One of the things that I find interesting about movies is how many acclaimed, award-winning directors started out doing thrillers and horror movies. Counted in that number is Steven Spielbeg. Jaws wasn’t his first horror-themed movie; the made-for-television Duel was. Duel is based on a Richard Matheson story and a Matheson script as well, so he started from a good place. Duel may not show the polish of Spielberg’s later efforts, but it’s a hell of a good place to start from. This is a tight thriller that uses solid camera work to ratchet the tension for the full 90 minute running time.

David Mann (Dennis Weaver) is a traveling salesmen heading out to make a sales call. On the way, he gets caught behind a dirty big rig going well under the speed limit. David passes it, and a few moments later, the rig passes him and slows down again. David goes around again and when the truck starts to approach him again, he speeds off down the highway.

From this simple beginning, Duel builds up a classic battle between David Mann and the unseen driver of the rig. For whatever reason, the truck driver decides to terrorize David for the rest of the movie. What makes this work more than anything is that we never see the truck driver and we never learn exactly why David is the target of his maniacal rage. David tries everything he can think of to avoid, distance himself from, or elude the trucker, but nothing works. At every turn, the truck driver attempts to harass him or get him killed. This includes inviting him to pass on blind turns with oncoming traffic, attempting to push him into passing trains, and otherwise trying to push him off the road.

Honestly, that’s really all there is to Duel. The entire film is David Mann trying to get away from the truck and the truck always finding him and attempting to kill him. There’s no plot beyond that and no explanation for what happens. In a lot of cases, this wouldn’t work at all. We need to sympathize with David, and that’s easy to do, since he’s being attacked for no good reason. We need to see the truck as a real threat, and that’s easy to do, too. But beyond that, we need to buy the situation, and this is where things are a problem. In a real sense, the situation seems so out of bounds that it’s hard to see it as being real, at least on the surface.

It’s here that Duel surprisingly works. I’ve been in a situation like this more than once. Not as extreme, of course, but I’ve seen road rage happen and have seen people go completely batshit over nothing while driving. For a situation that becomes so dire and so extreme so quickly, Duel is actually pretty relatable. Oh, I don’t mean that you can specifically relate to someone trying to ram your car into a passing freight train, but the idea that someone would lose it and start attacking someone else for no reason is something most of us have seen. And so it works.

The real problem for me is that I don’t really have a lot more to say about it. Spielberg’s direction is a little clunky in places. There’s not a lot of dialogue in the film, naturally, but there are moments of Dennis Weaver “thinking” dialogue, and these don’t work very well. Having him actually talking to himself would be a lot more effective here, but a mistake like this would be easily passed off as mistake from a young director. And while that might be a rookie mistake, Spielberg’s direction otherwise shows a surprising maturity. Not showing the driver of the truck and always showing the truck from an angle where the driver is invisible is brilliant. Keeping the danger completely faceless only enhances the tension, and actually makes the whole thing a lot more relatable.

Even if Duel didn’t work, it would be worth seeing for this early look at Steven Spielberg behind the camera. As it happens, though, Duel is a hell of a good thriller on its own merits regardless of who sat in the director’s chair.

Why to watch Duel: Spielberg started out badass.
Why not to watch: The resolution feels unsatisfying.

10 comments:

  1. I only caught up with Duel a few years ago and found it tense and gripping like you mention. I also think the ending was quick and abrupt. That is fairly common among genre films of the time, however. There was no need to drag out a giant finale. It's clear from Duel and Sugarland Express that Spielberg is a talent. He could have just kept making genre films and had a really strong career on his own.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I kind of wonder what Spielberg's career would have been like if he'd decided to be Wes Craven, or even Hitchcock. He can obviously pull off the genre really well.

      Delete
  2. Excellent piece! I really dug this movie...with really the same criticisms as you. This is where the master of the chase cuts his teeth. Just stellar camera work in this thing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Super fun to watch. I had a great time with it.

      Delete
  3. Duel is certainly an early high water mark and it's interesting to see how well he could direct actors as well as action. His feature career started out with him working with top flight talent with Goldie Hawn in Sugarland Express, God I HATED that movie!, and he's pretty much had that level of performer at his disposal ever since but while Dennis Weaver was a huge TV star and a competent actor he was never a particularly nuanced one, Spielberg brings out the best in him. His performance is pivotal to the success of the film and he makes the most of his character.

    All of Spielberg's TV films are interesting views. His first, in the pilot for the Night Gallery series, called Eyes with Joan Crawford is another example of his early expertise. And his follow-up to Duel called Something Evil with Sandy Dennis and Darren McGavin has a wonderful sense of dread. But he also directed a straight drama called Savage with Martin Landau and Barbara Bain that is stylishly done and showed his ability to work in other genres before he hit it big.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I honestly don't know any of these made-for-TV movies. It's nice to see that there's some validity in that format from back then, though. Spielberg certainly had to cut his teeth somewhere before he got to films like Jaws, and I don't think Jaws could have been the movie it was without Duel coming first.

      Delete
    2. Something Evil is on YouTube, unfortunately the others are tough to find. It's limited in scope of course due to budget constraints of the movie of the week format but still interesting to see in the context of his evolution as a filmmaker.

      There's another very good TV film on there called Reflections of Murder directed by a just starting out John Badham that is a remake of Diabolique starring Joan Hackett, Tuesday Weld and Sam Waterston. It was more of a special event when it first played rather than a random MOTW as evidenced by the three stars who were more feature players at that time than TV stars. Does it match the Clouzet original? No, but it is miles better than the weak Sharon Stone redo with both Hackett & Weld doing excellent work.

      Delete
    3. Most things don't match the Clouzet original. For that matter, most things are better than the remake.

      Delete
  4. I watched this movie on television as a kid with my father and loved it! I haven't seen it in decades, and now I want to see it again after reading your review.

    It's remarkably simply, but it really works - I think largely because you don't see the driver (who I imagined, when i was a kid, must have been the devil).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's really worth seeing again. It may pale in comparison to a lot of Spielberg's later work, but for a straight thriller, it's surprisingly effective.

      Delete