Emina Melonic returns to our page this week with a detour for a look at Detour, a film I must confess I didn’t know about at all. Always a great comeuppance when someone from a younger cohort than me fills in my cultural deficiencies (and adds to my to-watch list):
You wouldn’t think that one man can be plagued with a long and consecutive series of unfortunate events but it did happen to Al Roberts, one of the main characters in Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1945 film noir, Detour. Shot in six days (although the claim is disputed), Detour was considered a “B-movie.” Today, B-movie is usually associated with the grindhouse and exploitation genre, but during the 1940s, it had a distinct meaning, namely a film made by a lower production studio other than, say, Paramount or MGM. The directors specialized in making a 60-70 minutes long film that would play in the theater alongside the main feature (something like Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity). It was a way to get people into the theaters to get two movies for the price of one.
As a B-movie director, Ulmer stands out among others because he made creative and interesting films. Although he publicly claimed that he wasn’t interested in ever working for the Hollywood machine, his private thoughts reveal a man who was indeed seeking approval and an opportunity from the major studios. Sadly, that day never came, and much like Al Roberts, Ulmer’s detours as a film director never disappeared. He didn’t make it to the main road.
Detour opens with Al Roberts (Tom Neal) hitchhiking on an empty desert road. He stops by a roadside diner, and looks like hell. He’s clearly been through something awful, although it’s not yet clear what. The camera focuses on his worn-out face as he begins to narrate his life story of terrible events.
He was a piano player at a New York club. He’s quite talented (in the midst of jaunty, jazzy tunes, he switches into playing Brahms and Chopin), and clearly belongs in Carnegie Hall. He’s in love with the club’s singer, Sue, but she has dreams of her own. Before they get married, she informs Al that she’s going to Hollywood to try her luck as a chanteuse. It appears that she ends up being just a “hash slinger.”
Al can’t take the life of a simple-minded piano player anymore, and sets out for California. He doesn’t have a penny to his name, so he hitchhikes to Los Angeles. Things take a dark turn, and indeed a bad detour when he meets Charles Haskell, Jr. who offers him a ride all the way to L.A. Unfortunately for Al, Haskell dies of a heart attack.
Thinking he might be accused of murder, Al takes Haskell’s belongings and leaves the body in the desert. One assumes that Al would have been free and clear had he not picked up a woman hitchhiker, Vera (Ann Savage). He quickly learns that Vera is onto his little scheme. In fact, she was one of the hitchhikers Haskell picked up before he met Al, therefore she recognizes Haskell’s car and belongings.
Immediately, she begins to essentially blackmail Al. He will do exactly as she says, or else she will go to the police and tell all. Al is still trying to reach L.A. to reunite with Sue, but Vera has forced an inevitable detour of his life, which ends rather tragically for both Vera and Al.
Vera is unlike other femme fatales we are familiar in the film noir category. She is bold and cunning but she is hardly coy. She is quite unerotic too, and resembles more of a nagging wife than a woman who wants to manipulate men through the promise or use of sex. She is boorish, and her coarseness renders her natural beauty an anomaly. She’s not playing hard to get, and what makes her unique is the annoying directness with which she assaults Al. Without a doubt, she is evil, but there’s something homely about her too. Unlike most film noir women, Vera lacks sophistication and eroticism. Her directness renders her in some way, a provincial femme fatale, which is a unique touch by Ulmer.
Al too is not exactly the usual noir hero/anti-hero. He already lacks fortitude and courage but it is Vera that completely strips him of his masculinity, and he is a “mousy husband” to Vera’s “nagging wife.” It’s a pair made in desert hell and the desolation of the Nevada and California desert is the mirror image of Al and Vera’s empty souls.
Just like most B-movies of that time, Detour wasn’t really taken seriously but it was generously reviewed and it maintained a good status throughout years. However, recently, the film has gained its rightful place among not only film noir genre but also as an interesting and unique example of various film techniques, despite many continuity errors in the film. More than anything, Ulmer’s talent to make a really good film on a tight budget is what distinguishes him from other directors. In many ways, it is this forced minimalism that gives Ulmer a singular voice.
According to his daughter, throughout his life, Ulmer worried and was convinced that all of his work would either be destroyed or forgotten. His work brings forth an important question: who or what determines which film is part of the cinematic “canon.” It is directors like Ulmer that make us question the legitimacy or importance of experts. He invites us to explore cinema from a place of freedom rather than a place of constraint. It’s fine to take detours, as long as we don’t run into Vera.
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