In the railroad crossing scene, our protagonist is caught between a rock and a hard place (or a truck and a hard place, perhaps). As the driver of the enormous, Goliath-esque vehicle that looms over our David throughout the film pushes its prey ever closer to the train that barrels down the tracks, Spielberg is careful to stay on one side of the action; the right side, to be exact, of the 180-degree rule. Though he occasionally pushes to the extremes of this range, remaining within the “allowed” space lets the audience better absorb the quick cuts and frantic energy of this fast-paced scene, without losing track of the respective locations and arrangement of the vehicles.
Mixed within cuts to and from the two vehicles, pushing in on the protagonists face and cutting to longer, more expansive shots, we even find a POV shot in the mix, as David jams his foot on the brake from inside the vehicle.
In this scene in particular, I’m interested in how the two vehicles are shot as if a conversation were taking place; in particular, there is the unmistakable rhythm of shot-reverse shot in the push and pull between David’s small red car and the hulking truck on his tail.
In summary, Spielberg’s admixture of quick, variegated framing and attention to continuity allows the audience to feel the tension and horror of the events without ever losing track of the space, and treating the vehicles as their own “characters”, so to speak, serves to amplifies the film’s themes.