Spielberg Reveals Why Duel Outshines Jaws in His Eyes

After more than fifty years in the business, Steven Spielberg is still one of Hollywood’s most bankable directors. He’s delivered everything from box office smashes to personal tales like The Fabelmans, and his work continues to draw crowds. While punters have their own picks for Spielberg’s best, the director himself has a surprising favourite. In a frank chat with BFI, Spielberg admitted he finds his 1971 cult hit Duel more daring—and in some ways, trickier—than the legendary Jaws.

Spielberg’s fondness for Duel comes from his honest approach to storytelling. He’s never been shy about the fact that writing isn’t his favourite part of the job. Instead, he thrives on collaboration, especially when it comes to working with actors and letting scenes evolve on set. He credits Richard Matheson, who penned Duel, for helping him pull off a TV debut that still stands out decades later.

Improvisation at the Heart of Spielberg’s Early Films

Spielberg has often said he’s not your typical writer-director. Back in a 1977 interview, he confessed that he’d rather be on set, bouncing ideas around, than stuck behind a typewriter. For him, the magic happens when actors bring their own instincts to a scene, often going off-script to find something real. This approach became a trademark in his early work, shaping films like Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Instead of sticking to the script, Spielberg would focus on the emotional core of a scene, then encourage the cast to improvise. He’d record these sessions, sift through the chaos, and rewrite scenes overnight using the best lines. As he put it,

“There are moments with the people when they improvise and go beyond the script. Essentially I’m not a writer and I don’t enjoy writing. I’d much rather collaborate… So I locked myself away to write Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and when I came out I had a pretty good structure but I wasn’t crazy about some of the characters.”

He added,

“The actors helped me shake out the fat and get right down to what the scene was about – essentially the same thing I did on Jaws. We would find the theme of each scene, we would do improvisations about that theme (I had a tape recorder running), then I’d quickly run to the typewriter, find the best lines, and rewrite the scene.”

Jaws: A Raw, Primal Experience

Spielberg’s approach to Jaws was all about gut instinct. He wasn’t aiming for a deep, philosophical story—he just wanted to scare the living daylights out of the audience. His goal was to create a film that hit viewers on a physical level, much like the feeling he got reading Peter Benchley’s novel. That’s why he later called Jaws a “primal scream movie.”

Despite the chaos of constantly changing scripts, Spielberg said he was given a surprising amount of freedom on set. Studio execs kept their distance, letting him do his thing. Looking back, he joked,

“For some strange reason, I got away with murder on ‘Jaws’. They just left me alone. I changed the script every day, but I never received a telephone call from any of the powerful executives on the West Coast. I don’t think anybody was ever in love with any of the screenplays and felt that the story and script could only be improved.”

He also recalled,

“When I read the book I had a lot of fun, and when I began reworking the screenplay I had even more fun. And I really said, I’m going to make a primal scream movie. When I first got involved in the project, the thing that terrified me most was the idea that there’s something else out there, that has a digestive system with intake; and the whole idea of being on somebody else’s menu was just utterly horrifying.”

Duel: Spielberg’s Most Daring Challenge

Even though Jaws became a cultural juggernaut, Spielberg reckons Duel was the bigger challenge. For him, it wasn’t about the size of the production, but about making something as ordinary as a truck genuinely terrifying. Sharks are scary by nature, but turning a truck into a source of dread took a different kind of creativity.

In Duel, Spielberg had to invent new ways to build suspense. There’s no villain speech, no music to guide the mood, and no clear reason for the terror. That made the threat feel even more unnatural. As he explained,

“‘Jaws’ is a raw nerve movie, it’s just baring your nerves and saying this is about the birth sac, you swim around in yourself. That’s why I like parts of ‘Duel’ (1971) much better than I like parts of ‘Jaws’ (1975), because ‘Duel’ was more daring.”

He went on,

“It was about a very unnatural occurrence, whereas ‘Jaws’ is as natural as the evolution of mankind. ‘Duel’ was much more of a challenge, because trying to create that kind of fear out of a truck is a lot harder than the established fear of a man-eating fish underwater. But ‘Duel’ had a whole new set of rules.”

Duel’s Enduring Power After Five Decades

More than half a century later, Duel still packs a punch. At its heart, it’s a story about road rage pushed to the extreme, where a simple drive turns into a nightmare. Spielberg uses minimal dialogue, letting the sounds of the road and the engine ramp up the tension. One of the film’s cleverest moves is never showing the truck driver’s face—he’s just a pair of boots, hands, and a menacing vehicle. That lack of identity turns him into a force of nature, not just a bloke behind the wheel.

The pacing is key, too. The truck doesn’t attack non-stop; it stalks, waits, and intimidates. In those moments, viewers feel just as trapped as the main character, David Mann, always on edge and bracing for what’s next. That’s why Duel still stands as a masterclass in suspense, proving you don’t need a monster to make punters jump—you just need the right story and a bit of Aussie grit.