Do Not Be Fooled By This Man's Glasses - He Is Not Cool

To paraphrase a journalist whose name I failed to notice whilst reading his article, 'It seems the old masters have lost their minds in the back of a hard drive.'
There was a time when the 'old masters' to which he refers were known as the 'American New Wave'; the bright new hope of 1970's American cinema. Nowadays Scorsese, Spielberg and Lucas conjure little more than the idea of insipid Hollywood award fodder, lame summer blockbusters and silly facial hair, but there was a time that the terms bold, innovative and socially reflective were vaguely more applicable. Possessed with a seemingly innate ability to control and create dramatic tension, an affection for the work of the French New Wave and, in the case of at least two of them, a love of aliens; their films had a vigor and a joy to them that couldn't fail to excite. Young excitable Americans inspired by the then established French, inspired in turn by Hitchcock; what wasn't to like?

However, this post was not written to bemoan the creative demise of these old men, rather it was designed to hail one of their earliest works, and encourage its viewing. Spielberg's 1971, made for T.V. movie, 'Duel' is a stripped down work of pulsating cinematic bravado. Dennis Weaver stars as the picture's feeble protagonist - a man just trying to get to an appointment with a business client. The film, based on Richard Matherson's short story of the same name, basically plays out that age old question: what do you do if you are driving through the Californian Desert in the 1970's (no mobile phones) and someone in a massive rusty tanker truck was insisting on trying to kill you for no discernible reason?

At its core it’s a tale of the emasculation of the modern American, middle-class, urban man. Our hero is out-muscled and out-maneuvered at every turn by the anonymous and faceless driver of an unshakable ten ton machine. His pathetic attempts to help himself are constantly thwarted. His confused, stressed, erratic and wiry mannered interactions with working class highway 'locals' only exasperate his problems. When he is not being driven to death on the road, he is being derided by his wife on the telephone, having failed to protect her dignity at a social event the night before. When he tries to assist a school bus stuck at the side of the road, the children jeer as he fails in his task, laugh when he himself gets stuck and cheer when his nemesis, the truck, helps them with composure and ease. In fact his actions are so consistently limp that Spielberg doesn't even deem the character worthy of a name until he makes his first piece of decisive action. For the first time in the film our man confronts his tormentor head on, he doesn't flee or beg others for help, he fights the aggressor with an aggression of his own and is rewarded with a name: Mann, David Mann.

The character is brilliantly drawn by Dennis Weaver; brought to life in such a way that invites us to relish every unpleasantness that befalls him. The direction is equally deft, there is a moment early on when Spielberg's inexperience is made apparent (a silly and unnecessary voiceover scene explaining Mann's panicked thought process), but other than that he manages to put the unique narrative abilities of film to their fullest effect, something very few filmmakers even seem to recognize, let alone practice. Spielberg’s direction doesn't try to ape those literary attributes that his collaborator Richard Matherson had at his disposal when writing the short story on which the film is based. He recognises cinema's ability to tell a story in a way no other medium can, exploiting its potential to convey the indefinable, to explain complex contradictions in a split second yet simultaneously retain their ambiguity and, above all, to tell a simple story, in infinite detail, that excites and intrigues for 90 minutes. That Spielberg fails to recognise these notions when making his films now is disappointing, but it shouldn't mask the fact that he once did, and acted upon these premises with deft ability.

This is an American film, starring big cars and bigger trucks in really damn big landscapes. It bleeds American problems and captures American attitudes. Attempting to translate or explain this film in British, European, Asian or African terms or values would be futile. It's a slice of 1970's Americana that oozes cherry filling and deserves a cup of joe to go with it, as well as a less clichéd description of its American nature. Watch it, it is jokes.

N.B. When purchasing or renting this film, do not be put off by the front cover that makes it look like an 80’s B-Movie about truckers playing chicken, it is not.