7.8 | / 10 |
Users | 4.4 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
While traveling through the California desert for a business appointment, David Mann passes a smoky tanker truck. A game of cat-and-mouse quickly escalates into a life-and-death battle between David and the unseen trucker, with their vehicles as weapons.
Starring: Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone, Lou Frizzell, Gene DynarskiThriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1, 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono
Spanish: DTS 5.1
English SDH, French
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
At the time of this review, Duel was available on Blu-ray only as part of the Steven Spielberg Director's Collection. It is now separately available. I still recall the excitement of seeing Duel during its initial broadcast on ABC's Movie of the Week in November 1971. Even if you couldn't say why, it was obvious that this was something qualitatively different from even the best that broadcast television had to offer in the era before cable. Much of the reason was the sheer scope of the production, a sense that even the small screens of the time couldn't diminish. As Steven Spielberg explains in the featurette made for Duel's 2003 DVD release (and included here on Blu-ray), he had to began his directing career in TV to build a résumé, but his visual style was already that of a feature filmmaker. Duel uses more wide and medium shots than most TV films of the era. As a result, its closeups, especially of star Dennis Weaver's increasingly anguished face, register with even greater impact. The film was also an early demonstration of Spielberg's unique talent for photographing inanimate objects so that they seem to be alive. Spielberg's treatment of the menacing truck in Duel would turn out to be an excellent rehearsal for the recalcitrant mechanical shark in Jaws, for which the illusion of life was essential. (The director would later speak of "casting" the truck and having it "made up" daily as if it were a human actor.) And the toys that come alive in Close Encounters of the Third Kind manage to look unsettling just because of how they're photographed. But Duel had something besides directorial wizardry, and that was an ingenious script by visionary writer Richard Matheson, a frequent contributor to The Twilight Zone and the author of I Am Legend (multiple film adaptations), Button, Button (The Box) and Bid Time Return (Somewhere in Time). Matheson's screenplay for Duel, based on his short story of the same name, has the elemental simplicity of myth, which is one reason why the film still plays as effectively today as it did over forty years ago. Many explanations can be offered for the conflict at the heart of the story, but Matheson's genius, and Spielberg's gift, was to leave Duel open for all of them—or none of them.
The 1.85:1 aspect ratio of Universal's Blu-ray of Duel will no doubt be a source of controversy, since it could be fairly argued that the film's original aspect ratio should be 1.33:1, which was its format on DVD. Then again, the OAR of this version of Duel, which was created for theatrical exhibition, was arguably 1.85:1; so it could also be said that the Blu-ray's presentation corrects the DVD's error. Spielberg was involved to at least some extent in the creation of the widescreen version, as evidenced by his shooting of the additional scenes and his reference in various interviews (including the "Conversation" in this disc's extras) to discovering that opening up the frame in some of the shots revealed that he was in the back seat of the car giving direction to Dennis Weaver. In a perfect world, two versions of Duel would be included, the 74-minute broadcast version framed at 1.33:1 and the 90-minute (technically, 89-minute) version framed at 1.85:1. As far as the 1.85:1 version on Universal's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is concerned, the image capably reproduces the kinetic energy of the location cinematography by studio veteran Jack Marta (Cat Ballou, Plaza Suite). Detail is excellent in moments where the scenery isn't rushing past, and it's often much better than the screen captures indicate, because the camera itself is so frequently in motion that it's difficult to stop the action without creating motion blur. Although the image does not completely escape the processed look that is the hallmark of Universal catalog transfers, the digital tampering appears to be minimal. Natural-looking film grain is evident, and to the extent that any electronic sharpening has been used, the application is minimal. Contrast is strong throughout, and this is no doubt intentional for a film that its makers knew would be seen on TV screens with limited resolution. Because of the high contrast levels and a slight overbrightening, even strong colors are somewhat muted. For example, the red sedan driven by David Mann (the color was stipulated by Spielberg so that the car would stand out against the brown, green and gray landscape) isn't especially bright, although it is always distinctively red. The high quality of the Blu-ray's presentation is especially evident in the famous final confrontation between Mann's automobile and the tanker truck adversary: a long, continuous shot with multiple moving elements, all of which are rendered with impressive clarity and fine detail. It doesn't hurt that Universal has mastered Duel with a high average bitrate of 34.03 Mbps. The film is filled with many such scenes of complex action that make good use of the bandwidth.
Duel was originally released in mono, which is supplied here in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 with identical left and right front channels. The soundtrack was remixed for 5.1 for the 2003 DVD release, and that mix is also offered as the default audio track in lossless DTS-HD MA. The remix is conservative, leaving almost all of the sound in front where it belongs, and adding only the slightest sense of stereo expansion to the elaborate sound mix, most of which had to be created after the fact with dubbing and foley. The roar of the truck, the sound of the highway rushing by, the blare of train whistles and the background noise of the lunch crowd in Chuck's Café are just some of the essential sonic elements that amplify the tension in Duel, and the track reproduces them with good fidelity and surprisingly broad dynamic range (far better than what most TV speakers could have managed in 1971). The inventive score by Billy Goldenberg (Play It Again, Sam), which Spielberg discusses in his interview in the extras, blends so effectively into the mix that you're often unaware of its unnerving contribution to the film's sense of peril.
The extras have been ported over from Universal's 2003 "Collector's Edition" DVD of Duel, minus the production notes.
In his 2001 interview, Spielberg repeatedly thanks Duel for giving him a career, but the film also holds up as a gripping piece of entertainment, thanks to the happy combination of an enthusiastic young filmmaker finding his voice and a veteran writer of popular fiction honing his craft for expressing the essence of what scares people. While Universal's decision to present the widescreen version of the film on Blu-ray will no doubt trouble some fans, the result looks good and plays well. Anyone who wants to experience Duel for the first time shouldn't hesitate to do so in this presentation. Highly recommended.
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1971
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2014
2001
Collector's Edition
1976
Paramount Presents #47
1999
1979
2014
2004
Reissue
1983
The George Lucas Director's Cut
1971
1935
1976
2017
4K Restoration
1973