The camerawork and the editing are very sophisticated for a TV movie...
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Any serious fan of Steven Spielberg's work should take a look at "Duel", a TV movie that he made for Universal back in 1971 that was so well-received by critics that it was considered to be the best TV movie ever when it first aired. "Duel" is important because its success enabled Spielberg to direct "The Sugarland Express" as well as "Jaws". "Duel" is also important because it is the prototype for basically every movie in Spielberg's oeuvre. In "Duel", a "lost little boy" seeks safety from being attacked by a monster, and Spielberg's career has been devoted to "lost little boys" involved in chases/quests.
While driving north out of Los Angeles into the California desert on a business trip, David Mann (Dennis Weaver) encounters a rusting, smoke-belching oil truck that looks more like a monster than a vehicle. (In fact, in the real world, the truck might not even be allowed to go on the road given its awful condition.) At first, Mann and the truck's driver engage in silly tailgating and grandstanding. However, their highway combat increases in violence and intensity, with the never-seen truck driver often almost killing Mann. Mann initially tries to shrug off the duel as a nightmare or as a bad day gone worse. Ultimately, he finds himself in a very direct existential struggle for his life.
Spielberg develops Mann's character and background in spare strokes that nevertheless heighten audience awareness of his attacked-from-all-sides predicament. Mann's business trip is meant to secure a lucrative business account that will help his financial condition. During one of his rest stops, Mann talks to his wife on the phone. He tries to apologize for something that happened the night before, but she doesn't accept his apology. Mann's inability to help a school bus get back in motion again can be read as his failings as a father as well as his failings as an adult (i.e. he's still a boy rather than a man). All of these add up to an emasculation of someone who's meant to be an Everyman (emphasis on man created by the character's last name) of sorts.
The emasculated Mann is, of course, the "lost little boy". The primary chase involves the truck driver trying to kill Mann, though Mann finds his own chase/quest when he tries to discover the truck driver's identity as well as to find respite from a grueling death match. The story layers the different chases/quests so that the stakes get higher and higher as the story progresses.
Spielberg as the director gets a lot of credit for the movie's success. However, as you learn in one of the DVD's bonuses, Spielberg wasn't the only one who contributed to the excitement. Frank Morriss, the editor, pieced together a sequence using footage from various parts of the movie in order to prolong a tense highway chase. The viewer shares Mann's anxiety as his car barely inches up a mountain with an overheated radiator threatening to shut down the engine completely.
The camerawork and the editing are very sophisticated for a TV movie, even when compared to programs that we see on TV in the 2000s. For example, there is an elaborate tracking shot that takes viewers from the back of Mann's vehicle forwards along the sides of Mann's red car and the ugly menacing truck to the front of the truck's monstrous grill. There are several nice framings that isolate Mann from the people that he meets during his road trip. Several jump cuts towards Dennis Weaver's face emphasize his feeling of terror, reducing the need for him to overact.
Spielberg was very excited about the opportunity to cast Dennis Weaver as David Mann. The director remembered the actor's performance in Orson Welles's "Touch of Evil", and Weaver had become one of the best TV actors of his day. Weaver is very good in a role that is limited by the story's lack of scope. There's a palpable sense of Mann's fear, anger, and frustration thanks to Weaver's controlled, effective emoting.
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During the 1960s and 1970s, Universal exported its TV movies to movie theatres outside of the U.S. Therefore, Spielberg had the opportunity to expand "Duel" for its theatrical release, adding scenes involving the truck pushing Mann's car towards a passing train. This theatrical version of the movie is what we get on DVD, though it is presented in 1.33:1 rather than 1.66:1 or 1.85:1 because the moviemakers' shot composition was originally meant for TV exhibition anyway.
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