DUEL
Dennis Weaver, Cary Loftin. Dir. Steven Spielberg, Universal, 1971.Not long ago, I ran across an old interview with HALLOWEEN director John Carpenter in which he professed to hate the New Hollywood movement of the '70s, a movement which includes Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg. Carpenter does not single directors out by name, and I have to wonder if he hated Spielberg, because a good argument can be made that he & Carpenter employ a similar approach in their filmmaking, at least in the sense that both infuse story & thematic elements from one kind of genre film into others. Carpenter has long touted Howard Hawks's RIO BRAVO as his favorite film, yet he has never made a traditional Western. Instead, Carpenter took the ideas he loved from BRAVO - and Hawks in general - and used them in ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13.
Ditto Spielberg. Though he exec-produced BACK TO THE FUTURE III & AN AMERICAN TALE:FIEVEL GOES WEST, he, too, has never made a traditional Western. Nor has he ever made a traditional horror movie, but any follower of his career knows he loves both horror & Westerns. Instead, he loaded up his first blockbuster, JAWS, a riff on MOBY DICK & action-adventure movies, with horror-movie elements to the extent that succeeding generations of horror fans have adopted it as one of their own. DUEL, his 1971 breakthrough TV movie, which he envisioned as a Hitchcockian psychological thriller, uses both horror AND Western story elements. Indeed, halfway through my first viewing of DUEL a few weeks ago, I wondered how hard it was for Spielberg not to tip his hand by having Dennis Weaver say, "Who IS that guy?"
Not very, as it turns out. Though I see a certain amount of BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID in DUEL, Spielberg has always claimed he never saw DUEL in terms of either genre. Which may be true, but in his interview in the DUEL Bluray's Special Features, he also acknowledges that no two people have the same understanding of the same film, that it isn't possible.
His comment refers directly to how European critics considered DUEL an extended metaphor for the class struggle, but whether he saw other genres in DUEL or not, it's impossible to watch it and not see the film's influence on later horror pictures. I make a distinction between art & artist in most cases, but I avoid movies by convicted child molestor Victor Salva because I don't want to lend a pedophile legitimacy. I have seen Jeepers Creepers, however, and its unsettling opening set piece is a straight lift from DUEL, right down to the ominous truck & its unseen driver. While Spielberg recognizes how he recycled the mostly-unseen antagonist of DUEL in JAWS, I would argue Universal's schlocky horror picture from 1977, THE CAR, makes equally effective use of many of DUEL's ideas, including the never-seen driver.
Perceptive readers will not have missed my admission that I only saw DUEL for my first time a few weeks ago. When I started this blog & joined FilmTwitter, I came with a "I've seen tons of movies many times" attitude. A year later, I think it's more accurate to say I've seen many movies tons of times. I've known about DUEL since high school, almost 40 years back in my rearview, but somehow never had a chance to see it until this year. I think, for all the great things I heard/read about it, the term "TV movie" fueled a certain skepticism. While a certain movie podcast associated with a particular movie theater in Los Angeles has devoted a few episodes to rediscovering TV movies, particularly those of the '70s, I remained unconvinced because I seem only ever to have seen stuff like DROPOUT DAD, with Dick Van Dyke & Mariette Hartley or THE HUSTLER OF MUSCLE BEACH, starring Richard Hatch. Neither of those is a bad film, but they're not in the same league as DUEL or the JAWS-clone SHARK KILL, so my basic sense that made-for-TV movies were lighthearted fluff remained intact.
No longer. DUEL is better than many theatrical releases I've seen. I saw Sidney J. Furie's LITTLE FAUSS & BIG HALSEY for the first time a few weeks ago. While not the same genre, the latter boasts a cast including Robert Redford, Bonnie&Clyde's Michael Pollard, & supermodel Lauren Hutton, as well as a veteran director in Furie. Though a budget for FAUSS wasn't immediately available it obviously cost considerably more than DUEL'S $450K, but DUEL is unforgettable, whereas FAUSS, despite Redford, Pollard, & Hutton is eminently so. I never expected to say that of an ABC movie-of-the-week.
After seeing DUEL a few weeks ago, I was not sure what TO say. I loved it, but so much had been written about it in the ensuing 51 years I couldn't conceive what I could add to the conversation. I'll let my readers judge whether this piece adds anything of value, but watching it a second time made me realize I've thought about it more than any new-to-me picture I've seen over the last few months, a list which includes Cimino's THUNDERBOLT&LIGHTFOOT, Jerry Schatzberg's SCARECROW, & Hal Ashby's SHAMPOO.
As is often the case, I've written quite a bit about DUEL without even a rough sketch of the story - maniacal & anonymous truck driver menaces & stalks a traveling salesman cursed to drive a Plymouth Valiant - largely because I assume most readers will have long since seen it and because, as I recently averred, plot synopses bore the shit out of me. Still, a film's story is much more than the sum of its plots, and that deserves at least a moment of my time.
DUEL is a triumph of minimalism, a one-man show for the screen. Though stuntman Cary Loftin drives the fuel truck stalking Weaver, we never see him, allowing the truck, itself, to be the only significant character other than the soon-to-be star of NBC's McCLOUD. Spielberg uses voiceover narration to give us a sense of Weaver's increasingly frantic interior monologue, but there's little real dialogue, and most of that is expository or insignificant chatter along the lines of "Can I use your restroom?" and "Do you have change for the phone?"
Yet even without much dialogue, Spielberg tells us all we need to know about Weaver's David Mann within the first reel, which comes out to: a henpecked husband, struggling salesman, & Plymouth driver in the middle of a bad life is about to have an even worse day. Near-wordless action & Weaver's face communicate the story, and more effectively than reams of talk. It's also, as if often true of Spielberg, a master class in storytelling. Having seen JAWS more times than I can count, I usually enter viewings of it with a fair amount of noise in my head - received ideas, lore, critical comments - but somewhere around the 30-minute mark I always realize all that has receded and I'm a willing, even eager, captive of a story I've been told perhaps a thousand times since first seeing it on re-release in 1976. Last night, I found myself at first saying, "There's only one road to his destination? In California?" and "Dude, call your boss, tell him you can't make your sales call, & get the eff off the road for as long as it takes" but just like JAWS all that quieted as the story seduced me again. The knock on Spielberg before 1971 was that he understood lenses but not actors. DUEL proved he understood both actors and storytelling as well as any veteran director (Fellini was a big fan.) If someone reading hasn't seen this movie, I hope I've given them some reason to seek it out (it's on Bluray at most of your favorite online retailers.) If not, see it anyway. DUEL, a made-for-TV movie, is one of the standout motion pictures of both the '70s and all the years between then & now. Not to be missed.
Perceptive readers will not have missed my admission that I only saw DUEL for my first time a few weeks ago. When I started this blog & joined FilmTwitter, I came with a "I've seen tons of movies many times" attitude. A year later, I think it's more accurate to say I've seen many movies tons of times. I've known about DUEL since high school, almost 40 years back in my rearview, but somehow never had a chance to see it until this year. I think, for all the great things I heard/read about it, the term "TV movie" fueled a certain skepticism. While a certain movie podcast associated with a particular movie theater in Los Angeles has devoted a few episodes to rediscovering TV movies, particularly those of the '70s, I remained unconvinced because I seem only ever to have seen stuff like DROPOUT DAD, with Dick Van Dyke & Mariette Hartley or THE HUSTLER OF MUSCLE BEACH, starring Richard Hatch. Neither of those is a bad film, but they're not in the same league as DUEL or the JAWS-clone SHARK KILL, so my basic sense that made-for-TV movies were lighthearted fluff remained intact.
No longer. DUEL is better than many theatrical releases I've seen. I saw Sidney J. Furie's LITTLE FAUSS & BIG HALSEY for the first time a few weeks ago. While not the same genre, the latter boasts a cast including Robert Redford, Bonnie&Clyde's Michael Pollard, & supermodel Lauren Hutton, as well as a veteran director in Furie. Though a budget for FAUSS wasn't immediately available it obviously cost considerably more than DUEL'S $450K, but DUEL is unforgettable, whereas FAUSS, despite Redford, Pollard, & Hutton is eminently so. I never expected to say that of an ABC movie-of-the-week.
After seeing DUEL a few weeks ago, I was not sure what TO say. I loved it, but so much had been written about it in the ensuing 51 years I couldn't conceive what I could add to the conversation. I'll let my readers judge whether this piece adds anything of value, but watching it a second time made me realize I've thought about it more than any new-to-me picture I've seen over the last few months, a list which includes Cimino's THUNDERBOLT&LIGHTFOOT, Jerry Schatzberg's SCARECROW, & Hal Ashby's SHAMPOO.
As is often the case, I've written quite a bit about DUEL without even a rough sketch of the story - maniacal & anonymous truck driver menaces & stalks a traveling salesman cursed to drive a Plymouth Valiant - largely because I assume most readers will have long since seen it and because, as I recently averred, plot synopses bore the shit out of me. Still, a film's story is much more than the sum of its plots, and that deserves at least a moment of my time.
DUEL is a triumph of minimalism, a one-man show for the screen. Though stuntman Cary Loftin drives the fuel truck stalking Weaver, we never see him, allowing the truck, itself, to be the only significant character other than the soon-to-be star of NBC's McCLOUD. Spielberg uses voiceover narration to give us a sense of Weaver's increasingly frantic interior monologue, but there's little real dialogue, and most of that is expository or insignificant chatter along the lines of "Can I use your restroom?" and "Do you have change for the phone?"
Yet even without much dialogue, Spielberg tells us all we need to know about Weaver's David Mann within the first reel, which comes out to: a henpecked husband, struggling salesman, & Plymouth driver in the middle of a bad life is about to have an even worse day. Near-wordless action & Weaver's face communicate the story, and more effectively than reams of talk. It's also, as if often true of Spielberg, a master class in storytelling. Having seen JAWS more times than I can count, I usually enter viewings of it with a fair amount of noise in my head - received ideas, lore, critical comments - but somewhere around the 30-minute mark I always realize all that has receded and I'm a willing, even eager, captive of a story I've been told perhaps a thousand times since first seeing it on re-release in 1976. Last night, I found myself at first saying, "There's only one road to his destination? In California?" and "Dude, call your boss, tell him you can't make your sales call, & get the eff off the road for as long as it takes" but just like JAWS all that quieted as the story seduced me again. The knock on Spielberg before 1971 was that he understood lenses but not actors. DUEL proved he understood both actors and storytelling as well as any veteran director (Fellini was a big fan.) If someone reading hasn't seen this movie, I hope I've given them some reason to seek it out (it's on Bluray at most of your favorite online retailers.) If not, see it anyway. DUEL, a made-for-TV movie, is one of the standout motion pictures of both the '70s and all the years between then & now. Not to be missed.
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