Detour (1945)

Directed by: Edgar G. Ulmer | 68 minutes | crime, drama | Actors: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald, Tim Ryan, Esther Howard, Pat Gleason

‘Detour’ (1945) has been regarded as the ultimate B-movie for decades. Edgar G. Ulmer’s film noir is chock-full of technical flaws, clunky dialogue, and a protagonist pouting his way through the film. The wildest rumors were circulating about the limited number of shooting days; the film was said to have been shot in just a week with a budget of just $20,000. Later, both numbers would be adjusted; Ulmer shot ‘Detour’ in four weeks and had around 100,000 euros at his disposal (which is still modest, by the way). But he wanted a cheap look to further emphasize the desolation of the world in which his wicked characters find themselves – a hallmark of film noir. The life of protagonist Tom Neal, a former amateur boxer who had a modest career as a B actor but never made it to the A-list, was as depraved as that of his character; he was best known for the scandals in his private life. His affair with actress and socialite Barbara Payton, for example, which was widely reported in the American press, in which he hospitalized her new partner – the respectable actor Franchot Tone. He would later go to prison for the murder of his third wife. Nice boy, that Tom Neal…

For both Neal and director Ulmer, who, like colleagues such as Wilder, Zinnemann and Siodmak, fled to the US for the emerging Nazism in Europe and learned the trade from FW Murnau, ‘Detour’ is their best-known work. Also for the female lead actress, Ann Savage, her role in this film would prove iconic. Despite its imperfections, ‘Detour’ is and remains the embodiment of what characterizes a film noir. Neal plays Al Roberts, a moody jazz pianist who is in love with the singer with whom he plays night after night at a New York nightclub (particularly the song “I Can’t Believe You Fell in Love with Me”). He would like to marry this Sue (Claudia Drake), but she is determined to make her dream come true and leaves for Hollywood. Ambitious Al stays stuck in the nightclub, but then decides to follow his sweetheart anyway. Since he has no car and no money, he has no choice but to hitchhike. In Arizona, he is picked up by a man named Haskell (Edmund MacDonald). He tells him about a female hitchhiker who badly beat him up; a woman with claws, he jokes. After Al takes the wheel, Haskell dies of a heart attack. In a panic, Al buries the body and takes over Haskell’s car, clothes, money and identity. He has to, he claims, otherwise the police will think he killed Haskell.

Not much later, he picks up a hitchhiker, a young woman who calls herself Vera (Ann Savage) and who almost immediately slaps him: “Your name is not Haskell at all! What happened to the owner of this car? Where did you leave his body?’. This must be the woman with claws Haskell was talking about, Al knows. Vera doesn’t believe him when he tells what happened, but hopes to make a profit from the fact that the two are condemned to each other. When she reads in the LA paper that Haskell’s wealthy father is dying, she hatches a plan. She knows that father and son haven’t seen each other for at least fifteen years and wants Al to pretend to be Haskell junior and thus reap the inheritance. But while they wait in a hotel room for the old man to die, the mutual tension between spineless Al and the scumbag Vera rises.

‘My favorite sport is being kept prisoner’, says Al. In that one sentence, his whole personality – or lack thereof – is hidden. Al is a wimp, a masochist who almost seems to enjoy Vera’s venomous snarls and snarls. Why doesn’t he just grease it, you wonder. Especially if Vera has made a bottle of hard liquor soldier, there is plenty of opportunity for that. But he stays with her; he doesn’t want to leave at all. It would be hell for anyone else to have to sit in a car or in a hotel room with Vera. There is no kind word from her. The fact that the character ends up high on lists of the most evil film characters (often just below Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Diettrichson from ‘Double Indemnity’ from 1944) is enough in itself. But we have no sympathy for the complaining and jeremy Al either. Moreover, the question is whether the events should be interpreted exactly as Al would have us believe in the voice-over characteristic of film noir. Where he claims that the misery ‘happens’ to him, the deaths can also be interpreted in a completely different way. Who tells us that he isn’t telling his story purely to cover himself and provide an alibi?

Despite B-actors, a meager budget (most noticeable in the clumsy background images during the many scenes in which the characters drive the car) and the sometimes somewhat wooden dialogues, ‘Detour’ is an important film. Ulmer unites his background in German Expressionism, with its exaggerated lighting and striking camera angles, with American film noir with its jazzy soundtrack and themes of guilt, moral corruption, imperfection and human frailties. ‘Detour’ literally embodies all those imperfections. The film is not as stylish as Otto Preminger’s ‘Laura’ (1944), for example, as sizzling as Wilder’s ‘Double Indemnity’ or as compelling as ‘The Maltese Falcon’ (1941). Tom Neal remains far from the level of a Humphrey Bogart, Joseph Cotten or Orson Welles. And Ann Savage lacks the brooding sensuality that, for example, Stanwyck, Lauren Bacall and Gene Tierney do have. 75 years later, ‘Detour’ does not stand as proud as a number of other film noirs. Nevertheless, this is a film that, once you have seen it once, you will not soon forget. If only because of that one, unconventional but unforgettable murder scene.