Duel (film)
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Duel is a 1971 television movie directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Richard Matheson (based on his own short story), starring Dennis Weaver and a Peterbilt tanker truck. Duel was Spielberg's feature-length directing debut, following a well-received turn directing a segment of the anthology television series Night Gallery. Initially shown on American television as an ABC Movie of the Week installment, it was eventually released to cinemas in Europe.
Description
Duel is a thriller about a businessman named David Mann, who is played by Dennis Weaver. Mann is driving to a business appointment on the back roads of the California desert. For no apparent reason, he is terrorized by a large truck, which repeatedly chases and attempts to run him off the road. The film consists of a cat and mouse struggle between the truck and Weaver's character. Throughout the film, the driver of the truck remains anonymous and unseen, with the exception of two separate shots where his arm beckons Weaver to pass him, and another shot where Weaver observes the driver's snakeskin boots. His motives for targeting Weaver's character are never revealed.The truck driver was played by the late stuntman and character actor Carey Loftin, though at times Spielberg and others drove the truck.
Despite its simple plot, a low budget (only $375,000) and very short filming deadlines (originally 10 days), the movie maintains a high level of suspense due to Spielberg's taut direction and the script's refusal to resolve the central mystery of the driver. The film's success put the young Spielberg on the map in Hollywood, and enabled him to move beyond directing for television.
The truck, a Peterbilt, [link] was chosen for its "face". For each shot, several people had the task to make it uglier, adding some "truck make-up". The car was also carefully chosen, a red 1971 Plymouth Valiant with an underpowered engine to signify the weakness of the David Mann character.
The script is adapted by Richard Matheson from his own short story. Some have proposed that it may have been inspired by a 1947 episode of the old-time radio series Lights Out entitled "What the Devil", which had a similar plot but different resolution. However, Matheson himself states that it derived from an incident in which he and a friend were dangerously tailgated by a large truck (see trivia entry below).
Analysis
Duel falls under the suspense genre, a format popularized by the late director Alfred Hitchcock. In fact, much of the film’s score, particularly the use of the rapidly driving violins, seems to resemble that of Psycho, one of Hitchcock’s most popular films. It is often speculated that filmmakers use these genres as a means to express some underlying view or views about the world in which we live. We can certainly see this in episodes of The Twilight Zone where the protagonist is often a mere representation of ourselves caught up in some unexplained and often-inescapable circumstance. Is it no wonder that the author of the film's screenplay, Richard Matheson, was actually a recurring writer for such TV shows as The Outer Limits, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and, of course, The Twilight Zone.
In fact, on some level, Duel seems to play around with the ideologies and concepts of the socially acceptable male versus that of the female. We can see this in our protagonist, who is appropriately named David Mann. While it may appear that he is representing the everyday man, he is just the opposite of what sociologist Janet Saltzman Chavetz believed (in 1974) to be the traditional male. He isn’t tough, he isn’t aggressive, he isn’t proud, and more often than not, he allows his emotions to get in the way of the problem at hand. While very few women appear throughout the film – including his wife, a tomboy snake enthusiast, the waitress at a nearby restaurant – they all seem to be more controlling and more dominant than him. It’s no wonder that his apologetic phone call to his wife pertains to his not speaking up for her when another man was supposedly hitting on her the night before.
Spielberg illustrates how our protagonist lacks this sense of manliness, despite his valiant efforts. The enormous truck that haunts him is simply a manifestation of all the things he has failed to overcome as a result of not “being a man.” (Bear in mind, this is someone who children looked down upon and laughed at during a rather humorous scene in the film.) After several attempts to avoid and bypass the problem (the truck), it appears that it has just become far too powerful and overwhelming. With no other option, he must face the problem head on, as a man should. This, of course, is taken literally in the final scene as Mann has to resort to killing by staging a collision between his own car and the truck in order to lure both over a cliff, and presumably the driver also to his death. The smoke that had once blinded the protagonist from all life’s possibilities has finally cleared and he is left feeling more in control than ever.
Spielberg knew how to communicate to his audience on both the observable and intellectual levels. Duel represents some of Spielberg’s finest work expressing how our inner psyche can often manifest itself into much larger things (i.e. the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.) Using the suspense genre, we are able to see how brilliantly Spielberg is able to weave together story with the art of motion pictures. Duel appeals to audiences for all of these reasons and will continue to remain a landmark film.
Trivia
- In the ending scene where the truck and the car fall over the cliff, the driver's door of the truck is open, hinting to the possible escape of the driver.
- Spielberg has said in the past that he watches this film every time he is about to start a new project so that he never unlearns the lessons he taught himself in making it. However, on the DVD, he says he has not seen Duel for a while.
- Spielberg lobbied to have Dennis Weaver in the starring role because he admired Weaver's work in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (source: DVD bonus material).
- Shooting was completed in 13 days (3 longer than the scheduled 10 days), leaving 10 days for editing prior to broadcast as the ABC "Movie of the Week" (source: DVD bonus material).
- The old couple that Mann flags down on the highway are the same actors who appear in a helicopter in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (source: DVD bonus material)
- The groaning roar sound of the truck falling down the canyon, taken from stock footage of a dinosaur roaring from an old film, is re-used in Jaws (source: DVD bonus material).
- According to the magazine Ten Four, there were several trucks used to "play the part of the truck", one of which has survived. [link] However, according to director Steven Spielberg, there was only one truck. In the DVD bonus material, Spielberg states the last scene had to be filmed perfectly in one take because there was only one truck.
- According to director Steven Spielberg, the multiple license plates on the front bumper of the truck are meant to subtly suggest that the truck may be a serial killer.
- The story "Duel" was inspired by a real-life experience, in which Richard Matheson was tailgated by a trucker on his way home from a golfing match with a friend. (Source: Death on Wheels [a book containing short stories involving vehicles, including the story "Duel"], in the notes that precede the story [on page 75]).
- Much of the movie was filmed in southern California's "Canyon Country," in and around Agua Dulce, California and Acton, California. In particular, sequences were filmed on Sierra Highway, Agua Dulce Canyon Road, Soledad Canyon Road and Angeles Forest Highway. Many of the landmarks from Duel still exist today, including the tunnel, the railroad crossing and Chuck’s Café, a place where David Mann abruptly stops for a break. The building, now a French restaurant, still sits on Sierra Highway.
- The railroad featured in the film that is parallel to the Sierra Highway and running the length of Soledad Canyon, was the former Southern Pacific Railroad's Antelope Valley line. This line connects Los Angeles with Mojave, CA. via Glendale, Santa Clarita, Palmdale and Lancaster. In 1996, the Union Pacific Railroad merged the SPRR, and since 1992, this rail line features multiple round-trip METROLINK commuter-passenger train service between Los Angeles Union Station and Lancaster.
- In the online cartoon Homestar Runner, a TV is heard in one cartoon playing a movie with the line "I think that truck is trying to kill me!" and, on a later episode, "That's the same truck that tried to kill my dad!"
- The Incredible Hulk TV series used footage from Duel for its 1978 episode entitled "Never Give a Trucker an Even Break." Unable to sue on the matter (due to the studio's ownership of both the film and Hulk series), Spielberg insisted that all his future contracts list a clause designed to protect his movies from being used as stock footage.
See also
- Maximum Overdrive
- Trucks
- The Car
External links
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