coming up on TV: Steven Spielberg’s brilliant debut in DUEL

Dennis Weaver in Stephen Spielberg's DUEL
Dennis Weaver in Stephen Spielberg’s DUEL

Set your DVRs for Turner Classic Movies’ November 21 airing of Duel.  In 1971, some Universal exec hired 25-year-old Steven Spielberg to make some TV movies, the first of which was Duel.  This low budget suspense thriller foreshadowed Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark and the rest of Spielberg’s masterworks.

In the pre-cell phone era, Dennis Weaver plays a traveling salesman driving through an isolated desert mountain road when he becomes embroiled in road rage to the extreme – the driver of a tanker truck starts relentlessly hunting him down. This imposing 1955 Peterbilt 281 tanker truck becomes every bit the scary monster as the Great White Shark in Jaws.

At the time, Dennis Weaver was one of America’s most familiar faces from his oft comic supporting role in TV’s iconic Gunsmoke, and he had just become a star in his own right with McCloud.  He is perfect here as an Everyman – right down to his Plymouth Valiant.

I don’t know whether TCM is airing the original 74-minute (TV) or the 90-minute (theatrical) cut, but both are just about perfect. When I saw this on TV in 1971, I wasn’t thinking about who the director was, I was just riveted to the story, terrified that Dennis Weaver wasn’t going to escape his fiendish nemesis.

Barbara: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you

As Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you”.   Barbara’s suspenseful story is set in Cold War East Germany, so everyone is indeed being watched by the Stasi and informed on by their closest associates.  Barbara is a doctor who has applied for an exit visa and has therefore been exiled to the hinterlands from a top Berlin hospital.   Harassed by the Stasi, she is ever aware of everyone’s motives.  She is played by Nina Hoss in a performance that is extraordinarily controlled, alert and suspicious.

Barbara herself is driven by two imperatives – to escape from East Germany and to provide expert and compassionate medical care.  The story is a series of moments, some seemingly random, which tie together as the story builds to the climax, when the doctor must bet her life on a decision.

Barbara was co-written and directed by Christian Petzold (he won the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear for his work).  Given that’s it difficult to imagine how anyone else could have improved Barbara, I’ll be looking for Petzold’s next movie.

Cinequest: Solace

In the solid drama Solace, we meet two characters talking in a confined space about a matter of life and death, then another couple in a separate story and finally another setting with two more characters.  The three tales are effectively connected together at the very end by writer-director-editor Vandon N. Gibbs.

I’m looking forward to Gibbs’ next work.  The middle segment is a little too stagey, but Solace keeps the audience engaged throughout and the denouement is compelling.  The best of the cast are Russell Durham Comegys as a regretful hit man, Dupree Lewis Jr. as a street hustler and Rhoda Griffis as a wronged wife.

I saw Solace at its world premiere at Cinequest.  Solace will be playing at Cinequest again on March 6.

Cinequest: Chaos

Niels Schneider in CHAOS

In the unsettling and suspenseful French Chaos (Désordres), a teacher moves to a rural area only to have his family stalked by one of his new students.  It doesn’t take too long for us to figure out that the student Thibault is up to no good, but we can’t guess his plans or his motivation.  Writer-director Etienne Faure has created a story that grips the audience as Thibault is revealed to be more and more twisted and dangerous.

In a performance reminiscent of Robert Walker’s Bruno in Strangers on a Train, Niels Schneider plays Thibault.  The always reliable Isaach De Bankolé (Night on Earth, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 24) plays the teacher who seeks his bliss but who underestimates the kid’s weirdness.  Sonia Rolland (Josephine Baker in Midnight in Paris) plays the teacher’s wife; so beautiful that she can make your teeth hurt, Rolland is excellent as a woman who moves from aggrieved to reckless with breathtaking speed.

[BTW later this year Sonia Rolland joins Niels Arestrup (A Prophet, Sarah’s Key, War Horse) and Julie Gayet to star in 72-year-old director Bernard Travenier’s political dark comedy Quai d’Orsay, filmed at the real UN Security Council.]

Chaos will play again at Cinequest on March 7.

Coming Up on TV: Diabolique

If you like suspense, you will want to check out Diabolique, to be broadcast by Turner Classic Movies on May 12.  The headmaster of a provincial boarding school is so cruel, even sadistic, that everyone wants him dead, especially his wife and his mistress.  When he goes missing, the police drain the murky pool where the killers dumped the body, and the killers get a big surprise.  Now the suspense from director Henri-Georges Clouzot really starts.

A master of the thriller, Clouzot was nicknamed the French Hitchcock.  In an achingly scary scene from Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, two truck drivers try to get a long truck around a cliff side hairpin curve  – and the truck is filled with nitroglycerin.  If you like Diabolique, you’ll probably also like another domestic murder – this time set in Paris – Quai des Orfevres.

Coming up on TV: Strangers on a Train

On June 24, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting this 1951 Alfred Hitchcock suspense thriller – one of his very best. A hypothetical discussion about murdering inconvenient people turns out to be not so hypothetical.

Robert Walker plays one of the creepiest villains in movie history.  The tennis match and carousel finale are great set pieces.

DVD of the Week: Diabolique

The headmaster of a provincial boarding school is so cruel, even sadistic, that everyone wants him dead, especially his wife and his mistress.  When he goes missing, the police drain the murky pool where the killers dumped the body, and the killers get a big surprise.  Now the suspense from director Henri-Georges Clouzot really starts.

A master of the thriller, Clouzot was nicknamed the French Hitchcock.  In an achingly scary scene from Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, two truck drivers try to get a long truck around a cliff side hairpin curve  – and the truck is filled with nitroglycerin.  If you like Diabolique, you’ll probably also like another domestic murder – this time set in Paris – Quai des Orfevres.  Criterion has released the Diabolique DVD.