April 25, 2023 — Duel
7 min readApr 26, 2023
- (Introductory explanation of this series of blog posts)
- (Duel on IMDb)
- Before Steven Spielberg was ever hired to make a movie for theaters, he worked his way up as a young TV director and that part of his career culminated in this made-for-TV movie. I’m pretty sure it was successful enough in that medium to get a subsequent theatrical release, and if I recall correctly, it is a riveting enough thriller to keep the attention of a live crowd. But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. I don’t have many, or maybe any, specific memories. I just remember that it is suspenseful and visually exciting.
- I wonder if the road rage element of this story will be more relevant to me now than it was whenever I last saw this.
- Okay, pressing play.
- The beginning of the movie is a sequence of shots from the point of view of a car’s front bumper pulling out of a suburban garage and proceeding through California traffic, urban and rural, with radio providing the soundtrack. No musical score. Just driving. Effective atmosphere setting.
- The guy driving is just some man with a mustache. We know nothing about him. He’s on a two-lane highway out in the sticks and he comes to a big truck that is ugly and very exhaust-spew-y, so he passes it. Some well-thought-out shots.
- The truck passes him back! Mustache is annoyed and eventually passes him again and leaves him behind.
- But! Later on Mustache stops for gas and Villain Truck pulls into the same station. It is an ugly truck and framed all sinister like! We don’t see the driver of Villain Truck. We see that he has cowboy boots, and I think we hear him say something to the gas station attendant.
- Mustache calls his wife from a pay phone and it was just some boring domestic mom-and-dad-arguing stuff that might not mean anything except something about getting home in time later.
- Back on the road, VT shows up and is now clearly being deliberately bothersome to Mustache, swerving dangerously to prevent him from passing and tricking him into trying to pass when another car is in the way. This really does key into the dark enmity we experience on the roads fifty years later.
- 0:22:10 — Mustache did a tricky side-road maneuver to pass him successfully, but VT has caught up and is threatening to rear end him at high speed while honking! We don’t know why VT is menacing Mustache but it is extremely tense.
- 0:24:25 — Some kind of musical score happening now, is this the first music? It’s just this persistent chase between the two, and they keep showing Mustache’s speed increasing and now there is a percussive score. This culminates in Mustache swerving off the road and crashing into a wooden fence where a couple of farmers talk to him a little. We feel relieved that VT is apparently gone. There’s a café near there for him to duck into. He’s all mopey and shellshocked; I feel like if it were me I would be vocally hopping mad.
- He comes out of the bathroom and notices that VT is parked out front. There are multiple trucker-lookin’ dudes with cowboy boots at the bar, maybe the driver came in and is one of those dudes? We just don’t know. WE JUST. DON’T. EVEN KNOW.
- Mustache is starting to narrate from his head, being all “he must be crazy, he has got to be crazy”. He starts ranting in his head. Running scenarios.
- 0:37:07 — One of the trucker suspects, maybe even the one that looked the most nefarious, is ruled out because he leaves and drives away in a non-villainous vehicle. But another guy is left that has cowboy boots and we get a real good look at ’em. “Hm” we think. “Hm. Hm.”
- Mustache overthinks. He should have just stuck with “hm” like we did because he decides to confront the other boots guy, and that guy lays him out real good. Then leaves in another innocent truck. Who, then, is the perpetrator? Who?
- It’s someone else. Probably someone who wasn’t even in the café. Because VT is driven away by some someone that we don’t know about and that really gets Mustache fired up. He even runs after VT! But VT is a truck that is being driven at normal speed so that choice has no consequences. Mustache gets back in his car and drives away without addressing the damage he has done to that fence.
- 0:44:57 — Here’s a new twist; Mustache comes upon a school bus on the side of the road and the driver and kids flag him down for some help. The kids are doing their best to bully him as he tries to help them. They think that he is a loser when he fails to fix the bus by pushing it with his car, and now Mustache’s bumper is stuck to it. Mustache is having one crappy day.
- And just like that, VT has reappeared to loom portentously from the tunnel nearby. For a minute, Mustache starts to have to be worried that VT is going to somehow harm the kids. But he gets out of that jam and speeds away, noticing that VT stayed behind and pushed the school bus like a good Samaritan.
- (I only just learned that Samaritan has a capital S, did you know that it has a capital S.)
- Moments later Mustache is minding his own business at a railroad crossing, waiting for a train to pass, and VT shows up and it is ON, that truck is totally ramming Mustache toward the speeding train! That ends strangely, with the train passing, Mustache getting sort of in a weird position on the other side of the tracks, and VT taking off. Hm. Right? Hm?
- Oh it’s HM all right — a little bit later Mustache is continuing his drive at a visibly safe speed and yet he catches up to VT who is waiting for him. He decides to pull into a service station that is also a snake zoo and call the police. VT waits nearby for a bit and then turns around and just goes ballistic, crashing into absolutely everything on this property. Snakes, tarantulas, and iguanas are set loose as the poor proprietor watches terrified. We are at least glad there is a witness, plus that totally happened while he was on the phone with the operator. After some brief chasing, Mustache finds kind of a hiding place and VT passes him.
- He takes a nap and then moves on — we all know what’s going to happen, but at least it happens with a pretty stylish zoom-out shot when he spots VT again. At this point we’re wondering, are they going to confront each other face to face at last? Is that how this will end? Perhaps they will see that they are not so different they two. Mustache is into this idea and he gets out of his car to avail himself of this meeting, but VT just drives a hundred yards away like a baby.
- There’s a weird interaction with some old folks in a passing car that doesn’t help anything, then it’s back in the cars and on the road for some chasing. What’s different now is illustrated by Mustache shouting, “you can’t beat me on the grade, you can’t beat me on the grade!” So I guess he’s going uphill now. It must be difficult to show grade cinematically, but we get it. Also it does seem like a legit factor toward resolving this conflict. A true beginning-of-act-three.
- Chasing. VT is keeping up somehow and Mustache seems baffled but still determined. A nearby train is now a factor. The train and VT honk at each other out of professional courtesy, for they both speak the language of Cargo Conveyance. Mustache is now bleeding from his mouth, apparently as a result of some swerving-into-road-closed-signs he’s been doing. Do you think Steven Spielberg has gotten better at directing that kind of situation since he made Duel?
- 1:18:00 — Ooh, here’s a bummer of a complication… the first gas station guy mentioned something about maybe replacing the radiator hose, but Mustache was all “yeah sure, you got any snake oil to go with that” or something. But now he is actually having a radiator problem! Right as he’s trying to win a chase with a literal Villain Truck! Fortunately, Academy Award Winning Director Spielberg directs us through the suspense of the car slowly breaking down as it just barely crests a ridge and approaches a downhill grade. We totally get that. It is a situation that called for a clever director, and if it didn’t have that then I wouldn’t be watching this movie for you in 2023.
- The climax of the movie is relatively spectacular, but also kind of like wha? Mustache executes a plan of driving up to a hilltop, turning around and assuming play-chicken position, driving right at VT, wedging his briefcase onto the gas pedal, and jumping out. The two vehicles crash into each other and somehow this results in the truck barreling off a cliff and crashing in a plume of dust and fire.
- The movie just ends there, which is cool. The movie in general is totally cool. This is a highly entertaining movie, and you can see that its director made a lot of smart choices to keep the audience in suspense. This is not just an artifact from film history, notable for being the first Spielberg movie; it’s a movie you can recommend as a fun way to pass 90 minutes. And it truly does take advantage of how worked up we all get when we don’t see eye to eye with other drivers. If I were watching all of this director’s movies for the first time, starting with this one, I would be excited for all the rest of them and I would trust that this Spielberg guy is going to keep me wrapped up in a story every time.
- (Next: The Sugarland Express)
