Duel is the inspiration for this 2011 advert promoting a new model of Suzuki cars.
Spielberg scholar Steven Awalt has a book about Duel in the works and he’s published an excerpt from it on his website to whet the appetite.
It’s an excellent read that suggests we’re in for something very special indeed when the complete work is available to the public.
Steven is an authority on Spielberg and film as a whole - his work on his website SpielbergFilms was an inspiration to me, and it’s no exaggeration to say that were it not for Steven, I may not be running this blog.
Do give the excerpt a read, and rush out to buy the book when it’s released. You won’t regret it.
Striking French poster for Duel.
“Duel’ might almost have been a silent film, because it expresses so much through action and so little through the words that are here.”
The New York Times’ Janet Maslin discusses the raw power of Duel in her 1983 review of the film.
TV advert for Spielberg’s first feature-length film, Duel, which was an ABC Movie of the Weekend in 1971.
This is an interesting little snippet from an AFI seminar Spielberg held in 1978. In it, he discusses making a small-scale ‘People Movie’, and I find it so interesting because it shows the misunderstanding people (including, to an extent, Spielberg himself) have of the director’s work.
By this point, Spielberg had made Duel, The Sugarland Express, Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As Spielberg points out, The Sugarland Express is certainly a ‘People Movie’, but I’d say the other three films are too. Their stories may be extraordinary, but the people at the centre of them certainly are not - they are everyday folks, and their deeply relatable conflicts power the stories along much more than the special effects do.
It is, for me, the formula that makes Spielberg such a great film-maker - he has a great grasp on our dreams, but an even better understanding of our reality.
