Directed by | Edgar
G. Ulmer
Produced by | Leon Fromkess
Written by | Martin Goldsmith,
Martin Mooney (uncredited)
Starring | Tom Neal,
Ann Savage,
Claudia Drake,
Edmund MacDonald,
Tim Ryan
Music by | Clarence Gaskill, Jimmy McHugh (song "I Can't Believe
You're In Love With Me")
Distributed by | Producers Releasing
Corporation
Release date(s) | November 30, 1945
Running time | 68 min.
Language | English
Budget | $117,000
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
Martin Goldsmith's novel,
and was directed by Edgar G.
Ulmer. The 68-minute film was created and released by the
Producers Releasing
Corporation (PRC).
Although made on a small budget and containing only rudimentary
sets and camera work, the film has garnered substantial praise
through the years and is held in high regard.
Plot
A piano player, Al (Tom Neal), sets off hitchhiking his way to
California to be with his girl. Along the way, a stranger in a
convertible gives him a ride. While driving, Al stops to put the
top up during a rainstorm. He discovers that the owner of the car
has died in his sleep. Al panics and dumps the body in a gully and
drives off in his car. Later, he picks up another hitchhiker. Vera
(Ann Savage), a femme fatale,
threatens to turn him in for the supposed murder unless he assumes
the identity of the dead man to collect an inheritance.
Cast
Ann Savage, in a still taken from the film.
* 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
Production
Conceived as a B-movie,
Detour was shot in six days with a budget of $89,000,
ending up costing $117,000.[citation needed]
Production: Editing
With re-shoots out of the question for such a low budget movie,
director Edgar G. Ulmer made the decision to place storytelling
conventions above continuity.
Detour's famous example of this is the reversal of
the hitchhiking scenes. In order to parallel the westbound New York to Los
Angeles travel of the character with right-to-left movement
across the screen, many scenes had to be flipped. This caused the
cars to appear to be driving on the wrong side of the road, and the
hitchhiker to enter the car on the driver's side.
Production: Censorship
Because the 1945 Production code mandated that
"murderers... must be brought to justice", director Ulmer
satisfied censors by ending the movie with Al being picked up after
predicting his arrest earlier.
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.
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.
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.
5. Quote
“ | I know. Someday a car will stop to pick
me up that I never thumbed. Yes, fate, or some mysterious force can
put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all. | ”
See also
* Lost Highway
References
* Ebert, Roger (1998-06-07).
Great Movies: Detour.
rogerebert.com. Retrieved on 2007-12-11.
* Kemp, Phillip
(1987). in Wakeman, John (ed.): Word Film Directors,
Volume 1: 1890-1945. New York: H. W. Wilson, p. 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, p. 2.
ISBN 0-8021-3078-X.
The article "
Detour (1945
film)" is part of the
Wikipedia encyclopedia. It is licensed under the terms of the
GNU FDL.
modified: 2007-12-15 19:05:28
