Every industry has them.
Those aspirational icons who were clearly born to do what they were born to do.
Those undeniable stars whose skills were right there on full display from the very beginning.
And yet, because of the genre films he made early on, it took a while for most of Hollywood to look past their biases and take Steven Spielberg seriously as one of the most gifted visual storytellers of all time.
I know, I know. It’s nuts. But to paraphrase Jurassic Park, one of Spielberg’s best genre films, talent “finds a way”… to… succeed? I don’t know.
What I’m trying to say is that the guy is good.
And we certainly saw flashes of Spielberg's natural-born directing style in both Night Gallery and Columbo, the TV shows where he started his career.
Even back then, Spielberg always knew exactly where to put his camera, how to fill his frame, how long to hold a shot, and when to use silence. He also instantly showed an instinctive implementation of those hazy light beams and revelatory push-ins that would soon become trademarks. Not to mention those sweeping tracking shots that guide you through each scene, aptly making you feel like you are there.
And rarely has a young director emerged fully formed out of the gate like that.
But in Duel - Spielberg’s 1971 feature debut about a disgruntled businessman who is relentlessly pursued by the maniacal truck driver he offended - we got to witness the beginnings of his thematic obsessions as well.
As Richard Matheson’s screenplay unfolds, we see that Dennis Weaver's David Mann is trapped in a fishbowl of domestic troubles, symbolized early on via the circular washing machine door that is framed around him as he argues with his wife on the phone. (A motif that is later repeated when the truck that’s been chasing Mann creepily appears at the end of a dark bowl-like tunnel.)
Coupled with the talk show Mann listens to in his car, which serves as a stream of consciousness involving a bitter man ranting about his problems at home, we get the sense that Mann's life is unraveling. In short, he feels like he doesn't "wear the pants" in his family, which is causing a rift between him and his wife.
And this central dramatic issue of fractured family ties would go on to form the emotional core of many of Spielberg's subsequent films, wherein said families must work through their baggage amid the backdrops of, say, alien invasions or rampant dinosaur attacks. And this in turn has become Spielberg's defining hallmark: grounded genre stories featuring everyday people caught in extraordinary situations.
Duel also established many of Spielberg's visual tics. For example, we only see the truck driver in chunks - a flash of his arm, a glimpse of his weathered boots. Spielberg would go on to recreate this mystery technique with the main government agent in E.T., wherein we only see his jangling keys, instilling a true sense of menace.
We also see Spielberg's penchant for action sequences in Duel, as well as his inherent ability to effectively convey that paranoid feeling of "the walls are closing in." In particular, the scene in the diner where Mann tries to identify the truck driver is akin to the scene in Jaws where Roy Scheider’s Brody scours the crowded shoreline to see where the shark might strike. It is also reminiscent of the opening of Saving Private Ryan, wherein Tom Hanks' Captain Miller is engulfed by paralyzing terror as he takes in the mayhem around him.
All in all, Spielberg's most vital skill has always been the melding of his stylistic flourishes with his thematic ones, using the former to elevate the latter. It’s the key to his success - he makes the fantastical relatable. And he’s so good at this that they've even invented a word for it: "Spielbergian."
And once you get your own word, biases or not, there is no doubt that you have made an indelible mark on our culture.