Get your own Free Home Page
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
Starring Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald
USA, 1945
Not Rated (mature themes; recommended for older children)
SUCCESSFULLY GILDED MEMORIES... AND THEN THAT SONG.
Before legendary, cheap productions like The Blair Witch Project, there was Detour, a grade Z picture made in the 1940s that was all but forgotten until recently, when it gained a following. Made in six days and on the cheap by European expatriate and Murnau assistant Edgar G. Ulmer, Detour is rich with human hopelessness and throbbing intensity, even though it only runs for an hour and ten minutes. It is, I think, the quintessential film noir (Double Indemnity, Chinatown, and (if it counts as one) Sunset Boulevard are my favorites) because its plot is the bare-bones basis for most film noirs, and its theme of the ordinary man caught in an accidental web of crime and lies, which is the basic noir theme, is deeply rooted in its story.
The movie has numerous noticeable mistakes, which can be expected of any el-cheapo, hastily-made cult film, but they do not mar the film; they may even enhance it. Detour revolves around an ordinary noir leading man, a fellow by the name of Al (Tom Neal). The opening scene is in a café and Al is irritable. When a popular song, "I Can’t Believe You Fell in Love With Me," begins to play, he demands it be turned off. You can tell he has quite a past.
Everyone in this movie has a dark past that bursts out in the midst of seemingly unintentional crimes and chance meetings. Al thinks back to when his girlfriend, Sue (Claudia Drake), told him she was going to delay their planned marriage by moving to Hollywood in search of stardom. Al was not pleased. He was a piano player then and when, on a whim, he decided to hitchhike his way to Sue in L.A., his life was turned upside down. A man named Haskell (Edmund MacDonald) picks him up off the road and rambles on about his troubled past that includes an estranged father and a town he left at 15 after he punched a kid in the eye. Haskell falls asleep and Al is behind the wheel. In a wicked case of bad luck, it begins to rain and Al is forced to stop and put up the top of the car. He opens the door of the car’s passenger side, and Haskell comes tumbling out, his head falling onto the ground.
The man is dead, maybe from hitting his head or from a heart attack before that. Al doesn’t know. He strangely rationalizes that no one would believe Haskell just hit his head, and he says he is left with only one choice: he must hide the body and rush to the next town. Al stashes the body away, and figures that money is no use to a dead man and takes Haskell’s cash.
On his way to L.A., Al picks up a hitchhiking lady off the street. Vera (Ann Savage) is a discontented, snarling mystery and she dozes off after twenty minutes on the road. Then, she abruptly wakes up and accuses Al of not being the owner of the car and of being an impostor of Haskell. Al learns that he has picked up the last dame he should have- an acquaintance of Haskell’s. The two become involved in Al’s fleeing the law until another unbelievable mistake occurs and Al accidentally kills the woman.
Detour’s plot is intriguingly far-fetched and everything is exaggerated, like in most film noirs. Noir movies and their popularity and success lie within their gleeful, dark intensifying of the situations and the characters. Anyway, Detour is not about actual occurrences and facts, but about how Al, the gloomy protagonist, believes things transpired over those few, darkly eventful days. The movie does not really take place in the real world, but in the context of Al’s world and his desire to make things prettier than they are. Detour is done in extended flashback. Maybe Al needed Haskell’s money and his take on the events are just his way of giving ethical reason to his crimes.
Tom Neal deftly plays the part of Al. His character is a self-pitying, almost masochistic man. He seems to enjoy being prodded by Vera, this movie’s feline femme fatale, and seems to want to keep his emotional distance from people, but just ends up becoming too attached to them. His is one of the saddest cases in film noir; he is (or thinks he is) innocent, but heaven keeps hurling these lightning bolts at him. He laments, "Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you."
Ann Savage is unsympathetic, cruel, and astonishing as the scheming, man-eating Vera. Her dialogue is fanged and she knows how to twist and manipulate a man. Savage is boisterous and scene-stealing; she has a heart but, like most of the great screen noir women, it is selfish and cold, thereby arresting the audience. Her heart is set on money and control. Vera is more optimistic than Al, though. In one scene, she mentions the millions of people who die every moment who would love to trade places with the tormented Al. Al, her victim, moans that at least they know they’re in for it. She quips, "You’re philosophy stinks, pal."
Detour, which is one of the most exciting and unsettling works of art made with an anxious love of the movie medium and a shoestring budget, is about memory, connections, and perspective. Al, who is the center of all the mess, wants to forget the little errors that caused him to look guilty. He tidies up his story so he can at least believe his heart is good and worthy of life. It’s like Kurosawa’s Rashomon made years later; it’s a certainty the character of Vera would have seen things differently. Al’s relationships with people are clumsy or violent. He is never portrayed as the aggressor, yet he is the only one in the film who kills. Ultimately, he learns it is hard to run away from the unsettled past when songs, words, and faces that remind you of your deeds fill the stale air. Detour is also, and more obviously, about tiny things that throw off the outcome of life. What if Al had not ridden with Haskell? What if it had not rained? What if he had not run? What if he had just stayed in New York? What if he hadn’t picked up Vera? In the end, Al is still brooding over these questions.
Detour overflows with technical flaws, but it is still a masterpiece by a little known artist. It is known better today than it was even when it was released in 1945, but it still isn’t very famous. The people who do see it, though, won’t easily forget it. And those who see it will sooner walk than hitchhike their way to their destination. Life is the ultimate merciless trickster, but this pithy little picture gets you wondering if its everyman-protagonist really does deserve his fate after all, and whether, after everything is calculated and accounted for, we do too.
By Andrew Chan
Get your own Free Home Page