Outside Reading #2

This week we watched the 1971 film Duel directed by Steven Spielberg. The movie was a very interesting film. It was very different than movies I have watched before. Duel was very suspenseful, however I would tend to get very bored. Almost every scene was a car chase, cat-and-mouse-like chase, between David Mann and a tanker truck. This film descended from a short story in Playboy magazine. Duel was Spielberg's feature-length directing debut. Many of the shots in Duel are medium shots of David Mann driving. These types of shots emphasized his point of view on the chase. It expressed his emotions, thoughts, strategies, etc... The other shots the film consisted of were extreme close ups of the tanker truck. This emphasized it's physical features which were suppose to be scary. As the movie progressed the chase did as well. David Mann seemed to have lost his mind by the end of the movie when he uses a strategy to get the truck to drive off a cliff. As he looks down at the destroyed truck and what is left of his little red car. The film ends, without putting any of the puzzle together. I was very frustrated at the end because their was all this tension, all this build up. And then you don't even get to know why.

Spielberg, Steven. Duel. 1971. George Eckstein, 1971