Duel (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | duel |
| Original title | Duel |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1971 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Steven Spielberg |
| script | Richard Matheson |
| production |
George Eckstein for Universal Television |
| music | Billy Goldenberg |
| camera | Jack A. Marta |
| cut | Frank Morriss |
| occupation | |
| |
Duel is a 1971 directed by Steven Spielberg entstander Thriller and his eldest still completely original feature film . The minimalist staged and dialogue-poor film was originally shot as a television film, but later even came to European cinemas . The work, shot on a shoestring, was an unexpected hit at the box office, received positive reviews from many critics, and brought Spielberg's attention to the film world on a larger scale. As a throwback to the B-movie , its plot was picked up in feature films, music videos and even commercials in the 2000s.
action
The businessman David Mann is driving his car on a highway across California . During the long, lonely journey, a tanker truck appears in front of him at some point . Its driver noticeably slows down and prevents Mann from overtaking. When the man succeeds in the overtaking maneuver, the truck driver seems to have decided, for no apparent reason, to hunt down man. He overtakes him, slows him down, allows himself to be overtaken again and even tries to push man off the road. The man then stops at a gas station, lets the car fill up and calls his wife. Moments later, also holds the truck's next car, but the driver gets only briefly (only his cowboy boots are seen) and makes the gas station attendant with the horn to attract attention.
After the gas station stop, the truck resumes the chase. He forces man to speed down the highway at full throttle, thus pushing him to the limit of his driving skills. Man just manages to bring his vehicle to a stop at a rest area, where he damages a fence. He remains disturbed in the car while the truck speeds by. An elderly man asks how he is feeling, but thinks he is confused when a man tells him that a trucker wants to kill him. Visibly exhausted, the man enters the rest area and initially believes he is safe. Although the bartender asks what happened to him, Mann gives no information. After ordering a sandwich and trying to calm down, he notices that the truck is in front of the house. Since he has not yet seen the trucker's face, only his cowboy boots , he now watches the drivers present fearfully and wonders which of them could be his pursuer. However, since almost all of the men in the rest stop are wearing cowboy boots, he cannot identify him. Finally, he approaches a guest whom he believes to be the culprit. He defends himself and gives him a few punches, and it turns out that the man has suspected the wrong person.
Man is asked to leave the restaurant because of the incident. He sees the truck start moving again. A little later he also drives on, but after a short drive he has to stop because a bus driver asks him to push his school bus with his car. While the man struggles in vain to move the school bus from the spot, the truck appears in the far entrance of the nearby tunnel. He stops and his driver seems to be watching the action. For the time being, the man does not notice him, but instead gets caught in the bumper of the school bus with the bumper of his car. When he finally notices the truck, the driver switches on his lights and drives off. Man tries frantically to point out the danger and drive the children back to the school bus, but the bus driver reacts with incomprehension. In panic, with the help of the bus driver, the man loosens the interlocked bumpers and races off in the opposite direction, pulling past the truck that has just arrived. In the rearview mirror he sees the truck turning and pushing the school bus. He then resumed the chase and reached Mann at a closed level crossing . He tries to push Mann's car against the freight train that is just passing by. When the train passed the level crossing just in time, man drives up an embankment and is able to escape.
When he tried to call the police at another petrol station, the truck appeared and rolled down the phone booth. Man runs away, races off and hides behind a railway embankment , because he does not manage to unhook the truck. He gives the passing truck a head start and hopes to get rid of it. After hours, he starts driving again and is flabbergasted when the truck awaits him behind a hilltop. On an ascent towards the mountain pass , he tries to detach the stranger, but a radiator hose bursts, the engine overheats and the truck catches up again. Just in time he reaches the top of the pass, where the road slopes down again and his car picks up speed. Idling, he rolls down the street with the truck right behind him. He then loses control of the vehicle when the engine cuts out and the brakes fail, causing him to rub against a rock face and come to a halt. The truck almost reached him, then the engine can be started again and you flee into a dusty side street, which ends abruptly in a ravine after a short drive. Cornered and almost completely deprived of any escape route, he goes on the offensive: he steers his car head-on against his pursuer, clamps his briefcase in front of the accelerator and saves himself in time with a jump out of the moving car, just before the truck does rams and falls down the abyss with him.
At first you jump around for joy, but then stay where the action is while the sun slowly goes down.
backgrounds
script
The script was written by Richard Matheson , who had previously published the short story for it in Playboy magazine . The story was based on a true story where Matheson was chased by a truck while on his way home from a golf game with writer Jerry Sohl .
Spielberg reduced the lines of dialogue to around 35 to 40, and he only left them there on the advice of those responsible for television. Rather, he would have preferred to shoot without any dialogue.
As Alfred Hitchcock demonstrated in The Invisible Third in the Corn Field, Spielberg proves that horror can strike in the wilderness even in glaring daylight and does not depend on shadows or crooked vaults.
From television films to cinema films
Duell was originally produced as a television film for the American broadcaster ABC on 16mm film and aired on November 13, 1971, but was released in 1973 due to its great success. For this purpose, it was copied onto 35 mm cinema film using the blow-up process . The originally 74-minute television version was expanded accordingly with subsequently shot scenes to a 90-minute feature film. The phone call between David Mann and his wife, the scene at the level crossing when the truck tried to push the car into a train crossing the street, and the encounter with the school bus were all filmed in two days. The film was also shown in Europe and had its premiere in Germany on August 7, 1973.
Filming and footage
Most of the film was shot in southern California, particularly in Canyon Country in and around Agua Dulce and Acton . Filming took place in particular on the Sierra Highway, Agua Dulce Canyon Road, Soledad Canyon Road and the Angeles Forest Highway. Many of the locations are still in the same condition today as they were then.
The film was shot by Steven Spielberg on a minimal budget in about two weeks. In the making-of of the DVD, Steven Spielberg explains in detail how difficult it was to make the film in such a short period of time. The red, underpowered Plymouth Valiant was chosen with care. While Spielberg was relatively indifferent to the type of car, it was important to him that the striking color contrasted well with the bright surroundings of the desert road. Spielberg was more picky about the choice of truck. The choice of the long-hooded Peterbilt 281 with the split windshield and the round headlights should give the truck a "face" and convey a sense of threat.
The number plates from other states , which are affixed to the bumper like trophies, also contribute to this, since they subtly suggest that the truck driver has already chased and killed other motorists. The ominous exterior is enhanced by the visually heavy wear and tear on the truck, the label Flammable , its rusty and dirty exterior and the sooting exhaust pipe. Only one truck was available to shoot the television film, so the final scene with the crash on the slope had to be completed with one shoot. Three other similar trucks were acquired for the additional scenes in the movie. Only one of these tanker trucks used in the filming still exists today.
The film was produced for about $ 450,000 and grossed six million dollars in Europe alone.
German versions
The film was dubbed for the first time in 1973 for the theatrical release in mono . The German version was produced by Berliner Synchron . The book was written by Ruth Leschin and directed by Dietmar Behnke.
In 2004, the film received a new synchronization in 5.1 surround sound for DVD evaluation , which was created in Munich.
| role | actor | Cinema dubbing 1973 | DVD synchronization 2004 |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Mann | Dennis Weaver | Horst Stark | Martin Umbach |
| Mrs. Mann | Jacqueline Scott | Bettina Schön | Dagmar Dempe |
| Cafe owner | Eddie Firestone | Manfred Grote | Michael Rüth |
| bus driver | Lou Frizzell | Edgar Ott | Hartmut Neugebauer |
| Man in cafe | Gene Dynarski | Manfred Meurer | |
| Woman with a snake farm | Lucille Benson | Erna Haffner | Anita Höfer |
| Gas station attendant | Tim Herbert | Toni Herbert | Hans-Rainer Müller |
| old man | Charles Seel | Franz Nicklisch | Osman Ragheb |
| Waitress | Shirley O'Hara | Inge Estate | Marion Hartmann |
| elderly motorist | Alexander Lockwood | Knut Hartwig | Manfred Schmidt |
| older co-driver | Amy Douglas | Margit Weinert | |
| Radio announcer | Dick Whittington | Norbert Gescher |
Others
- The tanker truck is a Langhauber type Peterbilt Conventional 281. David's car is a 1970 Plymouth Valiant Custom.
- When the persecuted tried to turn to a police vehicle parked on the side of the road, he had to find out that it was just a pest controller with the label "Grebleips Pest Control" ("Spielberg" written backwards).
- In 1983 Steve Hackett released the song Duel on the album Till We Have Faces , the content of which was related to the film.
- In 2000, the plot of the film was picked up in the music video for the song "No Speech" by the rock band Guano Apes .
- The feature film Joyride - Joyride is very similar to this film.
- In the horror film Jeepers Creepers , the siblings Trish and Darry are terrorized while driving to their parents on a highway by a stranger in an old truck, the external condition of which is strongly reminiscent of the tanker truck in Duel .
- In 2002 Audi had a commercial produced, which initially begins like one of the chase scenes in Duel : An Audi allroad quattro is apparently being chased by a huge truck on a lonely country road in a desert-like area. Only in the last shot can you see that the truck is not following the Audi, but is being towed by it.
- Also in the film Hart am Limit there is a brief allusion to a duel , when motorcyclists on a remote highway first see a red car, and a short time later the conscious truck that follows the car approaches.
- In the 2005 film No Way Up - There is no escape (original title "Throttle") a businessman is chased and chased by a huge pickup in an underground car park . At the beginning of the plot, a red Plymouth Valiant drives past this businessman, whose driver resembles the character of David Mann from Duel . In addition, the main character in the film is called Tom Weaver , so the last name of the David Mann actor Dennis Weaver was adopted.
- In 2009, a short story by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill was published under the title Throttle , which the authors see as an homage to Duel . The English versions Duel and Throttle can also be found on the audio book Road Rage .
- In the King of Queens episode “The New Family”, duels are also alluded to. Doug is followed by an ice cream truck that tries several times to kill him. Here, too, you can see that the initially unknown driver of the ice cream truck is wearing cowboy boots.
- The truck, the Plymouth and original scenes from the film were used for the 7th episode of the first season of the series Hulk (1978-1982) "The Deadly Spedition" (original title "Never Give a Trucker an Even Break") with Bill Bixby . This led to many noticeable cutting errors.
- The “Making Of” on the DVD describes how Spielberg uses visualization to keep track of the extremely short shooting time of the film.
- A truck from the filming has been on display at Brad's Trucks in North Carolina since 2009 .
- This film is often referred to as Spielberg's first film. This is not correct, however, because he produced the 140-minute long feature film Firelight as early as 1964 at the age of 18, the original film roles of which have been lost and which is therefore only partially available today. That is why Spielberg took up a similar topic again in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind 13 years later.
- In 2015, the Canadian horror thriller Wrecker was a remake of Duell .
Reviews
"[Spielberg] literally revolutionized the ' television film ' genre, which was still in its infancy, and helped it - occasionally - to become an art form in its own right."
" An attempt, partly made with the means of action films , to model anonymous threats, fear and repression as an experience in road traffic and in human existence in general."
“It is hardly possible to escape the fascination of this film; the pace is wild [...] the shots of the cars chasing each other are exceptionally captivating. A ride well worth seeing. ( Times ) "
"Later films were more perfect, more family-friendly and morally valuable too - but here he really is about his life and shows his unadulterated genius. An early, wild masterpiece that even Spielberg himself, with all the money in the world, would not be able to manage. "
Prices
Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival
- Grand Prize : 1973
- Best note : 1972
Nominations
- Best TV Movie 1972
- Best Cinematography for a TV Movie : 1972
literature
- Tony Crawley: Steven Spielberg: a success story . Heyne, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-453-03409-0 .
Web links
- Duel in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Duel at rotten tomatoes (English)
- Discussion at Follow-Me-Now
- Information and photos about the locations of the film
Individual evidence
- ↑ Crawley, p. 52 f.
- ↑ a b Dirk Manthey, Jörg Altendorf, Willy Loderhose (eds.): The large film lexicon. All top films from A-Z . Second edition, revised and expanded new edition. Verlagsgruppe Milchstraße, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-89324-126-4 , p. 702 .
- ^ Crawley, p. 46.
- ^ Christian Lorenz: Duel
- ↑ a b duel. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 6, 2016 .
- ↑ Duel Truck History ( Memento from April 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ The Surviving Duel Truck ( Memento from May 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Crawley, p. 47.
- ^ Crawley, p. 56.
- ↑ duel. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing file , accessed on March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ duel. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing file , accessed on March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ DVD evaluation on OFDb.de
- ↑ autobild.de: What's the catch?
- ↑ Trivia on Firelight from the IMDb
- ↑ Firelight on mubi.com
- ^ Crawley, p. 44.
- ↑ derstandard.at: Steven Spielberg: "Duel"
- ^ IMDB 1973
- ↑ Emmy 1972
- ↑ Entry at Golden Globe
- ↑ Emmy 1972