The 1955 Peterbilt truck has a big snout and a wide grin. Since the face of the driver is never shown, the front of the truck becomes the face of the villain. Aggressive & obsessed. Though it is an old machine, the truck has unstoppable energy. Dave’s Plymouth Valiant is a bright red. A color that appears throughout the film. The truck is a rusted gray and brown. It belongs to the landscape of the California canyons.
The face of the antagonist.
Are the six license plates from the truck’s past kills?
The dictionary insists on the number two in its definition of the word duel. Duo from Latin. Combat between two men. The film presents a number of shots that repeat or pair off Dave and the truck. Phrases spoken return in shots that suggest a similar repetition. That might be a strength of Matheson’s screenplay.
Dave framed by the circle of a laundry dryer’s window door.
The truck framed by the circular opening of the tunnel.
The insistence on the matching shots clearly suggests a doubling. What’s going on here, Dave? Who are you up against?
The truck in the circle of the side mirror.
Dave in the circle of the side mirror.
There are two payphone shots. The first happens not long after Dave first encounters the truck and is surprised by its behavior. The second is later. The duel is deeply underway by now. And it is we the audience who is surprised by the action, since Spielberg has lulled us into taking a breath, thinking the truck will stick to its pattern and idle on the side of the highway, waiting for Dave to continue his drive.
Dave talks to his wife waiting for him at home.
“I’d like to report a truck driver that’s been endangering my life.” In both phone shots, he’s holding the receiver with his left hand, and the angle of his face is the same, his nose pointing to the lower left corner of the screen.
Spielberg claims he did not care what type of car was used as long as it was red and would stand out in the desert landscape. An obvious and accidental theme, then, since Dave isn’t exactly valiant in the classical, epic sense?
Mrs. Mann in a red blouse.
When he read the Matheson story and teleplay, Spielberg pictured a Hitchcock film. In the purely cinematic chases, you can feel that influence. Compare the two road shots below. Dave in a long shot, some distance from the truck and Cary Grant in a similar moment from North by Northwest.
I’m paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Nothing like an American landscape to background a lonely figure, is there?
Like The Birds (1963) by Hitchcock, the plot of Duel resolves at the end. Neither resolution has any explanatory power. I find that satisfying.
Talking Big 
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