I remember a Networked World "movie of the week". A phenomenon that burned on Saturday night used to be relegated to the evening movie on network television in an attempt to capture some notes on a night when most people came out. Sometimes, the film did not have the drivers, sometimes they were based on current world events (it would sometimes be a race to see who could make a film about the recent scandal). Would often film stars, popular shows on the network. Most of the time this film was something spectacular, but sometimes you find a diamond in the rough. Duel is one of the diamonds, and things started uber-director Steven Spielberg on his promising career.
The starting point of Duel is simple. A man traveling on a business trip, is terrorized by a tanker truck of fuel seems to be hell to kill him. That's it. When you turn this way, it does not seem to be able to maintain any kind of audience through 90 minutes of screen time. But he not only manages to keep the audience interest, but it fascinates them to continue to look at while waiting for what comes next. It is almost literally corresponds to watch a train wreck, only with cars. This ability to capture the public is a great credit not only for budding talents of Spielberg as director, but for the entire film process from script to screen.
The original story of man being terrorized by the truck looks a lot like an episode of "The Twilight Zone." One moment everything is in order that man is on his way to a business meeting. The next moment there is an 18-Wheeler tries to kill him. Part of the reason for this feeling is due to Richard Matheson, who wrote the original story (which appeared in Playboy magazine) and adapted the story to the screen. Matheson has written to all three versions of "The Twilight Zone" over the years, and The Twilight Zone: The Movie. The psychological aspect of the film, which is what helps drive the story, feels a bit like Matheson "Nightmare at 20,000 feet," where fans can remember, played William Shatner (and later, John Lithgow in the film version) as a man dismayed when they fly.
Both stories take place in small areas (from the cockpit of a plane and inside a car) when someone is mentally trying to reconcile what should be in its normal position in the front of the strange situation are actually in
Duel in that person is David Mann excellent play by Dennis Weaver. Weaver has the difficult task of playing a character who starts a little arrogant and unravels throughout the 90-minute film, but really have anyone to play against. Of course, it just spoke for themselves, but most of its businesses are not done with her voice, but her eyes. Weaver eyes show his pride, confusion and terror that the progression of the film. It's really amazing to see an actor do so much with so little.
As we have seen in other movies, however, you can have the best cast and the script and still have a film collapse without a proper direction. In another hand, it could have been a boring film about a man running around with a truck in pursuit. Instead, Spielberg gives the film a touch of genius, to capture the heart of Matheson scenario, and to anticipate the results of his early career would meet with hits like Jaws and Poltergeist. Spielberg's Duel shows as a teller of a story base to work with, rather than extravagant special effects, it now produces. This film is a perfect example of why I rarely update work because Spielberg special effects. Since its inception Spielberg have known the heart of his films should be a good story and the story is a man to be suffering from a truck or a crook on the run, Spielberg knows how to find the story and makes his better job to tell.
The film, like the duel and its low cost and simple story that will probably not today. It 'a shame, because there is a certain elegance in its simplicity. The story is told as well as can be. There is no danger that someone is trying to remake it or reworking it into something else, because what it is, is (a bad 70's clothes and all). Perhaps we should be looking for other movies that achieve such perfection, and remain so simple.
Disc: DVD
Duel was shot in twelve days in 1971 and released as a movie. With such a short production schedule, and since it was not the budding genius was in their midst, it is not true or documentary features behind the scenes for now. Normally I frown on DVD than strictly retrospective use of the material, but in this case, with only a trailer of the film's time period, there was not much choice.
The good news is that the retrospective material is very good. A documentary about the performance of functions Duel Spielberg, recalling those days with a little love. Spielberg is a memory of an elephant to remember or research to production, because it really has the details at your fingertips. With almost 40 minutes documentary (about half as long as the movie itself) talks about his TV debut director, the opportunity to make the film, the fight for the right to film in the place that filming in one study and carpets throughout, planning how to shoot with an overview of the route used (instead of script for the film), and the success of the film. Duel found popularity on TV was finally moved to the big screen.
Since telecom film was only 70 minutes, they had to go out and shoot some new images to expand to 90 minutes minimum to theaters, making Duel, one of the first "extended versions" Spielberg wanted to work.
One of the things about Spielberg's interview that I found most interesting was his realization that he could not make this film today, the same way he did then. He was as hungry as a filmmaker, then, eager to get their hands on anything he could find a way to shoot the film in such a short time. He knows he could do something so simple now, and while he admits he could not Schindler's List at the time. As he grew as a person has two doors open and closed to him. I think it's a very astute observation by one of the best in Hollywood.
