Duel – The 4K Blu-ray Edition of Spielberg's Cult Classic
Excellent technical quality, but there's a nice surprise right on the UHD disc
Before becoming Hollywood's most influential director, Steven Spielberg directed in 1971 a small film for American television that was destined to become a legend: Duel. A story of apparent simplicity — an ordinary man driving his sedan battling a mysterious truck driver and his rusty tanker — that already revealed the young author's extraordinary ability to manipulate tension and master staging.
Dennis Weaver is a traveling salesman in a marital crisis whose day turns into a nightmare after overtaking a huge tanker truck. From that moment, a relentless psychological and physical duel begins, a cat-and-mouse game that becomes a metaphor for human vulnerability in the face of an unstoppable and faceless evil. Spielberg builds fear intelligently, alternating subjective shots, depth of field, and sudden silences to keep the viewer in a constant state of alert.
A Cult Classic from the Small to the Big Screen
Filmed with limited means and transformed into a feature film after its television success, Duel is today considered Spielberg's first masterpiece. In just an hour and a half, the future author as we know him today defined his poetics of invisible danger.
Although initially produced for TV, the film was shot on film (unspecified sensitivity, Panavision R 200 and Arriflex 35 IIA cameras), 1.33:1 TV format then changed to 1.85:1 for theatrical release. First 4K edition (3840 x 2160/23.97p), HEVC encoding on BD-100 triple layer. Richness of colors and further light dynamics via Dolby Vision, also increased level of detail for an all-round spectacle ready to unleash rivers of adrenaline, especially on large screens. Close to technical reference, grain is an integral part of the work; in UHD, one gets closer to the work of cinematographer Jack A. Marta. Compared to the 2K counterpart (included here on BD-50), the images have even more life and superior detail for elements even in the background.
On both discs, we find DTS lossy 5.1 channels for Italian (24 bit) with decent rendition, which despite the technical effort does not possess particular sound elements to make the spectacle truly exhilarating. One would need to switch to the original DTS-HD MA 5.1 (24 bit) to gain in spaciousness and richness from every single channel. In UHD, English switches to Dolby TrueHD 7.1 with ATMOS objects (24 bit) which approaches reference podium.
At the top of the extras is the TV version (1.33:1) in 2K on the 4K disc, shorter at 74 minutes compared to the 90 minutes of the theatrical cut, English only (Dolby Digital 2.0 – 224 kbps) with decent rendition. The rest of the supplements are present on both discs and relate to previously released material: conversation with the director (36'), Spielberg and the small screen (9'), story and screenplay (9'), poster and photo gallery, trailer. Italian subtitles everywhere.