DETOUR B+
USA (68 mi) 1945 d: Edgar G. Ulmer
Did you ever want to forget anything? Did you ever want to cut away a piece of your memory or blot it out? You can’t, you know. No matter how hard you try. You can change the scenery, but sooner or later you’ll get a whiff of perfume or somebody will say a certain phrase or maybe hum something. Then you’re licked again!
—Al Roberts (Tom Neal)
While the IMDb catalog lists 52 films directed from 1930 to the mid 1960’s, director Edgar G. Ulmer worked on closer to 127 features, starting his career in Germany as a set designer for early Fritz Lang films of the 20’s and 30’s including METROPOLIS (1927) and M (1931), also F.W. Murnau’s SUNRISE (1927), before emigrating to Hollywood in 1931 and making a name for himself in America by directing THE BLACK CAT (1934), an atmospheric horror film adapted from an Edgar Allen Poe tale starring both Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. But of all the films he directed, only DETOUR was chosen to the National Film Registry, the first B-movie to be chosen, as it carries the distinct imprint of the post war, German Expressionist style mixed with the bleak fatalism of an American film noir. Supposedly shot in a week for less than $20,000, a road movie with no location shots, this lighting and production design is remarkably inventive in a morality tale of an unlovable loser stuck in a nightmarish, Kafkaesque world, featuring a down-on-his-luck loner, Al Roberts (Tom Neal), the victim of bad luck and trouble and an ill-fated future, paralyzed by the poisonous venom from the Queen Bee villainess, Vera (Ann Savage), a mysterious hitchhiker whose cold-blooded, in-your-face, blackmailing technique overwhelms him and keeps him stymied throughout the film, suffocating him with her sting, toying with his guilt and paranoiac delusions, unable to claw his way out of her web. A mere 68 minutes, the film reflects an era of utility and purpose, where nothing extraneous is added to this taut psychological thriller, something unheard of today, as they would add plenty of character development. Not so in this film, which in an uninterrupted shot shows the open road stretching out to the horizon through the opening credits, where the camera is distancing itself from the road left behind.
Using an overly morose inner narration throughout, Al is a jazz pianist down in the dumps and seen hitching across the country from New York to Hollywood, broke and hungry, with little to show for himself, hoping to unite with his girlfriend Sue (Claudia Drake), a pick up singer last seen when both were literally immersed in a fog bank. A brief flashback sequence shows an amusing quality that is interestingly used later in The Blue Dahlia (1946), where the sound of American jazz music is a sign for mental agitation (recall William Bendix screaming “Turn off that monkey music!”), as emotional and psychological scars have obviously left their mark as Al screams to shut it off when someone plays a song on the jukebox that recalls better times, Detour (1945) - Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me - YouTube (1:50), suggesting a happier world and a better life that he remains exiled from in the present. This device was also used in CASABLANCA (1942) when nightclub owner Rick forbids Sam the piano player from playing a certain song. Among the more brilliant scenes are the nightclub sequences, which include Al playing solo piano, performing ultra-theatrical versions of Chopin and Brahms waltzes, odd choices in a jazz club which add a hyper realistic but out of synch view of the world as seen through his eyes. What’s also interesting is the frequent use of Ulmer playing an orchestral reprise of the song “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows,” which suggests Al has already cut himself off from reality and is chasing a pipe dream. The mood quickly changes when Al is picked up by a bookie on his way to Los Angeles, Charles Haskell (Edmund MacDonald), a guy on a mission to reverse his own luck but dies mysteriously in the car, where Al in a panic assumes his identity, thinking no one would believe he died naturally and would suspect the worst, claiming his cash, his clothes, and his car, hoping to ditch the car once he gets to Los Angeles. But incredibly he picks up another hitchhiker along the way, Vera, who immediately accuses him of murdering Haskell, as she was riding with him earlier and recognizes Haskell’s clothes and car. Again in a spot, backed into a corner, Al succumbs to all of Vera’s demands, where she takes all the money and plots to sell the car, continually threatening to expose him to the police if he doesn’t do as she says.
As a B-movie, the clarity of image is lacking, the soundtrack has a noticeable hiss throughout, and the razor-sharp dialogue at times resembles screwball comedy with the frenetic pace, where the dialogue is not always in synch with the actors and at times has such an amusing, overly hard-edged, noirish language to it that it feels as if Al and Vera are talking in code. Their tough guy, stone-faced approach to one another, filtered through the extra layer of haze caused by excessive alcohol, creates a kind of dysfunctional paralysis, where neither one of them makes a bit of sense and instead exposes viciousness and raw desperation, where her overly aggressive stance keeps him cornered, even though any reasonable person would simply walk away at any number of opportunities, but he remains ensnared by the very nature of her deviousness. The contrast between the two is markedly different, as is the contrast between the two women, where Al and Sue are both viewed as innocent and naïve next to the willfully crass amorality of Vera, nonetheless, the world closes in on them both with a dizzying claustrophobic hysteria. Audiences must love hating Vera, as she’s so over the top, one of the more evil and diabolic femme fatales who fittingly gets what she deserves, which only ends up tightening the noose around his neck, casting him out into the world chasing shadows, where behind every dark corner is someone searching after him. The entire film is saturated in layers of guilt and self-loathing, where Al is seen as such a weak, miserable wretch that no good can come to him, where he will forever wander the streets aimlessly like a ghost stripped of his worldly existence, where a wrong turn somewhere distanced him from ever having a future, leaving him instead lost, eternally wandering the wasteland. As fatalistic a film as you’re ever going to find, perhaps the biggest irony is what actually happened to actor Tom Neal, a former boxer, who was ostracized from the Hollywood community in the early 50’s for his hair trigger temper, alcoholism, and history of physical assault, eventually charged with the murder of his own wife. After serving his sentence, he died of a heart attack less than a year following his release.
