Film movements and newly flourishing film culture have often
helped movie enthusiasts to re-evaluate or re-discover particular style of
films. This was particularly true of film noir (of the 40s) which although had
been revered for decades by the French critics (they also coined the term). The
video culture and the film criticism of the 1970s boosted few forgotten tiles
of film noir, some eventually raised to ‘masterpiece’ status - the truth blended
with mythos helped certain movies’ popularity. Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945)
was one such movie to have been re-discovered and went on to occupy an honored
place in the history of film noir. It just about appears on every film noir connoisseurs’
list of classics of the genre.
Edgar Ulmer was one of the expatriate film-makers - born in
Austria - who came to Hollywood after the rise of Third Reich. Ulmer associated
himself with film industry by working as set designer. He has worked in the
notable silent films of the era, including “Der Golem” (1920), Fritz Lang’s
“Metropolis” (1927) and “Die Nibelungen” (1924). At Hollywood, he directed the
Universal horror classic, Black Cat (1934), starring Bela Lugosi and Boris
Karloff. However, Ulmer’s directorial career didn’t flourish much under the
studio domination. He was content with doing small-budget films and Ulmer’s
visual styles very often belied the paltry budget. The knowledge of Detour’s
low-end production is very well known among noir aficionados: it was shot over 28-days, although it
was rumored to have been only shot in six days. Yet Ulmer easily transcends
ramshackle production into a highly professional piece of work. He also perfectly puts to use the grimly fascinating and focused script (by Martin Goldsmith) that instantly grabs our attention.
Detour offers textbook illustration of film noir narrative
and imagery: voice-over narration, broken men, dangerous women, smart use of
montages, unusual camera angles (oh that coffee cup!!), and effective use of
lighting, especially that slot of light to denote the protagonist’s emotional
torment. The narrative largely unfolds as a flashback. The disheveled and
tempestuous central character, Al Roberts (Tom Neal) sits in a shabby diner and
thinks back on the nightmarish events from the past few days of his life. Al is
a New York pianist who is deeply in love with his singer girlfriend, Sue (Claudia Drake). The girl, however, has decided to move to Los Angeles to try for better
prospects in the showbiz. But Sue only lands up in a waitress gig. To support
his agonized lover, Al decides to hitch a ride to Los Angeles and get married.
Al feels lucky to have come across a guy named Charles
Haskell Jr. (Edmund MacDonald), who agrees to take him, all the way to L.A. since that was his destination too. The guy even buys Al a meal. Charles is a
burly guy who likes to chat. He tells the story behind the scratches in his
hand (courtesy of a crazed female hitchhiker), about his horse-betting profession,
and finally the reasons for making this trip. Al takes the wheel for few hours
and allows Charles to sleep. Soon, Haskell croaks (the reason remains baffling)
and Al, in a state of panic, hides the corpse behind a bush and borrows the
guy’s money, car, his suit, and his identity. Al’s bad luck only turns worse
when he makes the mistake of picking up a hitchhiker himself. The hitcher is a
mean, sharp-tongued woman named Vera (Ann Savage) who knows Al is lying,
because she was that 'crazed female' who gave Charles Haskell Jr. his scars.
After extraditing the truth from Al, Vera sticks on to him like a parasite and
chooses to use him or rather Al’s new identity to receive loads of money.
Like a typical noir, Detour dabbles with bleak fatalism,
tracing the downfall of an ordinary, flawed yet conscience-striken man who gets drawn into web of
crime due to odd twists of fate. Ulmer stages the narrative with an urgency and
strong sense of inevitability, depicting how Al’s desperate actions to
avoid disaster only secures his doom. The cynicism and bitterness - staple
elements of film noir - is clearly evident in Detour’s quest for
happiness-gone-wrong narrative. In many ways, the film is seen to be providing a
counterpoint to the usual perception of Hollywood & Los Angeles as a dream
factory.
The woman who talks of making it big gets (literally) strangulated.
The man with dreams of bonding back with his love gets increasingly haunted by
nightmarish scenarios. The cross-country journey may be mostly filmed on a
process stage. But the limited production values help to establish the
surroundings as wastelands, which shatters one’s dreams, doing the opposite of
what the typical American cross-country trips tend to achieve. Ulmer excels in
keeping intact the grimy, sooty atmosphere throughout, be it the set design of
darkly-lit diners or the suffocation-inducing motel rooms.
Detour also greatly benefits from the central pair’s
unerring performances. Neal is pretty good at expressing the looks of sullen
resignation while facing every disapproval and indignity inflicted upon his
character. The memorable shot of small slot of light on Neal’s face perfectly
conveys the countenance of a person who only expects the worst from life.
Savage lives up to her name, her Vera occupying the hall of fame of femme
fatales alongside Barbara Stanwyck, Rita Hayworth, Joan Bennett, etc (though
Ann Savage never made the jump to A-list stardom like the other female actors
mentioned here). Vera is absolutely feral, irredeemable, and intolerable,
Savage’s fire-breathing performance was truly entertaining. Interestingly,
Savage’s Vera was not bluntly sexualized, unlike the femme fatale roles of the
era.
Though technically a bit rough, Detour (68 minutes) doesn’t have any flaws (perhaps the strictly
enforced Hays Code moral ending was the only annoying aspect) and it offers a remarkable
distillation of film noir’s essential themes and images.
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