Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg & Duel (1971)
1)Spielberg’s first feature is Duel (1971).
2) In the film, Dennis Weaver portrays David Mann,
3) a business commuter from California driving a Plymouth Valiant while on his way to meet a client. 4)He soon finds himself chased by the mostly unseen driver of a shabby Peterbilt 281 who chases and
    terrorizes Mann after Mann overtakes him.
5) Duel was produced for TV and later had a theatrical release.
6)The film cost $450,000 in 1971 and would cost 2.6 million dollars today.
7)Mast and Kawin claim that Spielberg established the “movie as ride” concept.
8) His films resemble theme park rides in that they offer the thrills of chaos,
     but never get out of control.

Comment from Edgar Wright: 

Director Edgar Wright interviewed Spielberg about Duel in an article for Empire in 2018:

Wright: What’s interesting to me watching Duel is, you have straight away as your first feature, such confidence in your visual storytelling. I think one of the reasons it stands out from the pack within TV movies, is you’re bold in the way you’re covering the action. So many TV directors or TV movies at the time would be shot with basic coverage or sometimes very flatly directed, and people are just covering the action and figuring it out in the edit. Very early on, with your first effort, the staging is very ambitious and straight away, as you’ve continued to do in all your films, you have masters that can’t be edited any other way. Some scenes are done in one shot, and you’re really editing in your head. I guess you were in your mid-20s when you directed it. Where did that confidence come from?

Spielberg: Well, I think that confidence is contingent upon the screenplay. In this sense I had a hell of a bedrock foundation. It was a streamlined story by Richard Matheson that gave me a lot of direction to direct it with. It’s really interesting. The other thing that really helped was there was such a paucity of dialogue in the script and even less so in the finished movie. I cut about fifty per cent of the dialogue out of the script. It told me that this was going to be my first silent movie. I was a huge fan of the silent era and had at that point in my life gone out many times to the Nuart and other revival houses to watch silent movies on the big screen. I even tried to get the network to agree to let me cut out even more dialogue, but the network was adamant that we needed what remained as some kind of a road map for people who just watched TV and who didn’t want to put too much effort into the viewing experience. If I’d had final cut in those days, I would have cut the dialogue even further back.

Wright: Duel is a film that demands your attention. If you look at it by today’s standards in terms of TV direction, let’s say in terms of network TV, it’s almost an art film. Which I think is incredible. When you watch it, you feel that this is a silent suspense movie

Spielberg: It’s a primal road rage story. You’re watching a lightweight go up against a heavyweight champion. Like David and Goliath, at first you put your money on the giant and it turns out that David starts to turn the tables. I had also thought of it as a Biblical parable.

Wright: Your style then is very different at a time when the early 70s directors were taking a much more improvisational tack and finding the movie on the day. Even from your TV work, you’re going in with a plan. With Duel, you had to go in with a plan.

Spielberg: I had to. I had a shot list for all the television I ever directed. You had to. They give you very few days. They give you six days for an hour. And I had something like 12 on Duel for 74 minutes. I had a shot list on every TV episode I ever made. I had my shots (organized) and it’s the only way to get ten pages shot a day.

Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971):

Duel Trailer - Click Here
We saw a portion of this chase just the beginning part before it escalates

Duel Ending - Click Here

Hitchcock's influence on Spielberg video
Intro to clip:
When watching Duel, I realized that it was a very suspenseful movie. I decided to watch the directors commentary and was pleasantly surprised that Spielberg also had Hitchcock in mind. This prompted me to create a video on the influence Hitchcock had on Spielberg to create the best TV movie of all time
Click Here

Spielberg says, the unseen is always scarier than the seen. 

What he learned from Hitchcock is "don't give them relief" 
Don't answer the questions...take your time and draw out the suspense as much as possible. 

Hitchcock says, "The more successful the villain, the more successful the film."