‘I’d like to report a truck driver who’s been endangering my life...’
It’s not often you get to witness the birth of a cinematic genius in their debut film. Reservoir Dogs. The Evil Dead. Duel. While the latter isn’t as lauded as those early films from Quentin Tarantino and Sam Raimi, Steven Spielberg’s directorial debut is just as innovative and singular. Every frame of Duel is bursting with ideas. Every shot has clearly been carefully chosen and the master director strips cinema down to its bare bones and in doing so comes closer to emulating Hitchcock than anyone else ever has…
The plot is about as simple as it gets. An unfortunate man (Dennis Weaver) develops a feud with a truck driver whilst driving across America that escalates into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. That’s it. There are episodes of Tom and Jerry with more of a dense plot than Duel. It doesn’t matter. We’re not here for character development. We’re not here for dialogue (which is lucky because you find much of that here). We’re here to see one of the greatest directors of all time film the shit out of a massive truck chasing a terrified man in his car across the Mojave Desert. And this is what Spielberg provides.
Duel started out life as a TV movie before the incredible reception it received resulted in Spielberg adding in 20 minutes of extra footage to make it long enough for a theatrical release. You can see all the elements that would come to dominate cinema over the next three decades in Duel. His attention to detail, the vast array of shot types (some of the angles here are so Dutch that they might as well be wearing clogs) and his ability to wring suspense out of seemingly innocuous situations that would pave the way for Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and beyond. It’s a testament to the man that Duel still feels exciting, dangerous even. This is timeless cinema.
Spielberg went on to bigger and better things after Duel, but this TV movie should be essential viewing for cinephiles everywhere. This is the dawning of a new age of moviemaking.
