In Steven Spielberg’s 1971 television film Duel, Dennis Weaver plays David Mann.
David Mann is an ordinary traveling salesman who becomes the target of a seemingly relentless truck driver on a remote California highway. The film builds suspense by keeping the truck driver’s identity and motives largely unexplained. Mann’s surname is also thematically appropriate: he is an everyman whose routine journey becomes a fight for survival.
Duel began as a television movie based on Richard Matheson’s 1971 short story of the same name. Matheson wrote the screenplay, and Weaver’s performance helped turn the small-scale premise into a landmark suspense film. Spielberg’s direction attracted major attention because of its inventive use of camera angles, editing, and sound.
A common mix-up is calling the character simply “the driver” or confusing him with the trucker. The trucker is never given a conventional named identity; David Mann is the clearly identified protagonist.