One night - I think it was a Friday - in 1971 my whole family was downstairs watching something on the 25 inch color TV, but I was alone in my parents' room glued to the 13 inch black and white screen. For a week or so prior I had been catching glimpses of an upcoming movie that if the previews were to be trusted promised to be the most exciting thing a 10 year old human could hope to experience. So I had camped out in the my parents' room right after dinner, giddy with anticipation.
And it more than lived up to my fantastic, wild, juvenile imaginings. It was unlike anything I had experienced before, and I'm pretty sure, since. Duel was a unique statement - no, not a statement - a proclamation that cinema, moving pictures, is how you really tell a story in a film. Not with cold, dry jibber jabber, but with captivating eloquent action. Eloquent wasn't a term I used when I was 10 but that's how I'm now interpreting the masterful techniques that had inspired in me an exhilarating sense of wonder.
What an incredible, harrowing ride it was! And I wasn't just captivated by the superbly filmed action, but also fascinated by the not-too-subtly implied metaphor. I had understood that this motorized battle, this treacherous contest of mismatched machines was also a bold and brash retelling of the biblical tale of David and Goliath. But I didn't need the Bible to get me to cheer for Dennis Weaver in his puny sedan. Rooting for the underdog, it seems, is a natural, even primal instinct, and so no back story, character development, ulterior motives, or subtext, or anything was needed. Steven knew and exploited this advantage to the max, and what would probably have amounted to little more than a clever, stylish stunt in anyone else's hands, Spielberg had elevated to archetypal art.
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