Aug 10, 2009

My favorite Spielberg shot

I found this wonderful still from Duel on the interweb the other day. Seeing as this is my blog, and I can do what I like, I'm going to post it. It's my favorite Spielberg shot; you see it in almost every film of his. Sometimes the truck is a dinosaur.* Sometimes it's a Nazi. But there's a always a monster-in-the-rear-view-mirror shot. Its the concision I love: both chaser, and chasee, compressed into a single frame. Hitchcock would have loved it. Only that shot of cracking glass in The Lost World — you see both the spreading splinters in the glass and the rocks many hundreds of feet below — comes close.

*Jurassic Park's rear-view mirror includes the crowning detail: "Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear."

No comments:

Post a Comment