Detour (1945) is a film noir cult classic that stars Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake and Edmund MacDonald. The movie was adapted by Martin Goldsmith and Martin Mooney (uncredited) from Goldsmith's novel and was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. The 68-minute film was released by the Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), one of the so-called "poverty row" film studios in mid-twentieth century Hollywood.
Although made on a small budget with bare sets and straightforward camera work, Detour has gathered much praise through the years and is held in high regard. The film has fallen into the public domain and is freely available from online sources. There are also many DVD editions.
Plot
Al (Tom Neal) is a piano player who sets off hitchhiking his way to California to be with his fiancee. Along the way a convertible driven by Charles Haskell Jr. stops to pick him up. Al is driving while Haskell sleeps when a rainstorm begins and Al pulls over to put up the top. However, Haskell doesn't wake up and falls out onto the pavement, dead. Al dumps the body in a gully, takes Haskell's money, clothes and ID, then drives off in Haskell's expensive car. After spending the night in a motel, Al picks up another hitchhiker. As it happens, Vera (Ann Savage, playing a femme fatale) had earlier ridden with Haskell and blackmails Al by threatening to turn him in for murder unless he gives her all the money. In Hollywood they rent an apartment and while trying to sell the car, learn from a newspaper that Haskell was about to collect a large inheritance. Vera, who has an unknown illness which she hints may cut her life short, demands that Al impersonate Haskell but Al balks at this notion. When the two get drunk in the apartment and begin arguing, a snubbed Vera takes Al up on his angry dare to call the police, whereupon Al accidentally strangles her with a telephone cord. Al starts hitchhiking back east, but as the film ends is picked up by the police near Reno.
The film is narrated by Al, who may be an unreliable narrator.
Production
Ann Savage in a publicity
still taken for the film.
Produced as a B-movie, Detour was shot in six days for about $20,000, a low budget for the 1940s.[1]
Editing
With re-shoots out of the question for such a low budget movie, director Edgar G. Ulmer put storytelling above continuity, such as flipping the negative for some of the hitchhiking scenes. This showed the westbound New York to Los Angeles travel of the character with a right-to-left flow across the screen, but also made cars seem to be driving on the "wrong" side of the road, with the hitchhiker getting into the car on the driver's side.
Censorship
Production codes in 1945 did not allow murderers to get away with their crimes, so Ulmer got through the censors by having Al picked up by a police car at the very end of the movie, after foreseeing his arrest in the earlier narration.
Cast
- Tom Neal as Al Roberts
- Ann Savage as Vera
- Claudia Drake as Sue Harvey
- Edmund MacDonald as Charles Haskell Jr
- Tim Ryan as Nevada Diner Proprietor
- Esther Howard as Holly, Diner Waitress
- Pat Gleason as Joe, Trucker at Diner
- Don Brodie as the Used Car Salesman
Reaction
In 1992, Detour was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Critical response to the film today is almost universally positive. Most reviewers contrast the technical shoddiness of the film with its successful atmospherics. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote:
"This movie from Hollywood's poverty row, shot in six days, filled with technical errors and ham-handed narrative, starring a man who can only pout and a woman who can only sneer, should have faded from sight soon after it was released in 1945. And yet it lives on, haunting and creepy, an embodiment of the guilty soul of film noir. No one who has seen it has easily forgotten it."[2]
He also included it in his list of great films.
Sight and Sound reviewer Phillip Kemp would later write:
"Using unknown actors and filming with no more than three minimal sets, a sole exterior (a used-car lot) to represent Los Angeles, a few stock shots, and some shaky back-projection, Ulmer conjures up a black, paranoid vision, totally untainted by glamour, of shabby characters trapped in a spiral of irrational guilt."[3]
Novelists Edward Gorman and Dow Mossman wrote:
"...Detour remains a masterpiece of its kind. There have been hundreds of better movies, but none with the feel for doom portrayed by ... Ulmer. The random universe Stephen Crane warned us about—the berserk cosmic impulse that causes earthquakes and famine and AIDS—is nowhere better depicted than in the scene where Tom Neal stands by the roadside, soaking in the midnight rain, feeling for the first time the noose drawing tighter and tighter around his neck."[4]
Remake
A remake of Detour was produced in 1992 starring Tom Neal's son Tom Neal Jr. and Lea Lavish along with Susanna Foster's first acting appearance in 43 years and her final appearance on film. Produced, written and directed by Wade Williams and released by his distribution company, Englewood Entertainment, it has not been released on DVD, but a VHS release has been available.
See also
References
- ^ Macnab, Geoffrey (2004-05-08). ""Magic on a shoestring"". guardian.co.uk. http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1276436,00.html. Retrieved 2008-03-07.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (1998-06-07). "Great Movies: Detour". rogerebert.com. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19980607/REVIEWS08/401010312/1023. Retrieved 2007-12-11.
- ^ Kemp, Phillip (1987). Wakeman, John (ed.). ed. Word Film Directors, Volume 1: 1890–1945. New York: H. W. Wilson. pp. 1110. ISBN 0-8242-0757-2.
- ^ Gorman, Edward; Mossman, Dow (1988). "Introduction". in Gifford, Barry (book author). The Devil Thumbs a Ride & Other Unforgettable Films. New York: Grove Press. pp. 2. ISBN 0-8021-3078-X.
External links
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