DETOUR (director:Edgar G. Ulmer; screenwriter: Martin Mooney (uncredited)/Martin G. Goldsmith/From book by M.M. Goldsmith; cinematographer: Ben Kline;cast: Tom Neal (Al Roberts), Ann Savage (Vera), Claudia Drake (Sue), Edmund MacDonald (Charles Haskell, Jr.), Tim Ryan (Diner Proprietor, Gus), Esther Howard (Hedy), Don Brodie (Used Car Salesman), Roger Clark (Dillon), Pat Gleason (Joe), 1945)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
How can a bad film be good? Well, in the hands of Edgar G. Ulmer, it is possible to end a film with an overbearing melodramatic paranoia to it, on the edgy words of the protagonist, who wonders to himself how, "fate could put the finger on you and me for no good reason at all," and not be laughed at as pretentious dialogue. Instead, this work becomes a memorable cult film that can so easily in lesser hands than the skilled Ulmer, have fallen into the realm of inanity, but here becomes a strong film about the meaning of fate. What is most amazing, though, is that this film was shot in six days in a Poverty Row studio on an extremely low budget, without an attempt to get any location shots for a story that centers around a cross-country hitchhiking trip, and yet it remains gritty and realistic even if the film is full of technical errors. It remains fully a part of the rich history of B&W noir films. It is also an example of what the big studios can't seem to do well, how in their attempt to make a film that is pleasing to a large market share of the audience, they too often lose track of how interesting a story can be without the usual formula applied to it or the need for making it glitzy, and they fail to get into the soul of their stars, where they should have been going in the first place. Which might explain how this poorly acted, weakly-crafted story, was so much applauded by film buffs that it has reached classical cult status in film lore and is even revered by certain noted directors such as Martin Scorsese, and was held-up by the French movie critics as a work of true art when they discovered the neglected film in 1950.
Al Roberts (Tom Neal) is a piano player in New York City who is in love with the singer, Sue (Claudia Drake), in the dive-like club he plays at. But she is ambitious and breaks off their marriage, telling him that she is going to Los Angeles to try to make it to the big-time. Despondent, he phones her after she is there for quite awhile and learns that she is working as a waitress. He tells her that even if he's broke, he will still hitch out there to be with her.
The film opens with him hitching a ride to a Reno diner, telling people at the counter that he wants to go east. The story is told in flashback, as the grousing hitch-hiker hears the song 'I Can't Believe You Fell in Love With Me,' played on the jukebox, and we find out what happened to him to make him so desperate and resigned to losing all hope. In a voiceover, he asks, "Did you ever want to forget anything and can't because there is always something that comes up to remind you of what you were trying to forget?"
His bad luck in getting rides seems to change when a fancy convertible stops to pick him up in Arizona and the driver, Charles Haskell, Jr. (Edmund MacDonald), an affable bookie, tells him that he's in luck, because he's heading to Santa Anita racetrack.
After Haskell treats him to a meal, and they are on the road, it starts to rain, and when Al tries to awaken him to help him pull down the convertible top, he is surprised to find that Haskell has died from a heart attack. The most memorable part of the film, the part that seemed the eeriest and most convincing comes next, as Al starts to panic and can't think clearly. He goes over in his mind the choices he has, as he keeps saying to himself who would believe me if I told them what happened: 1) My first instinct tells me to run. 2) The next possibility is to sit tight and wait for the cops.
Al decides to hide the body and take off with the car and Haskell's wallet and driver's license. Unfortunately when he tries to get him out of the car, Haskell's head hits a rock, making Al more certain that he made the right decision to run away.
Seemingly home-free, entering California, he picks up a woman hitch-hiker, the femme fatale, Vera (Ann Savage), and she turns out to be the hitch-hiker that Haskell told him about, the one who badly scratched him up after he tried to make a pass at her. Vera is a truly rotten person and holds him prisoner in her attempt to make a killing on this fortuitous turn events for her. She threatens Al that she will go to the police unless he gives her all of Haskell's money, which he does without a fight. But when she insists they go into Los Angeles and sell the car, he stalls, just wanting to get away from her.
Haskell had told them both the same sad story, about running away from home at 15 after putting a friend's eye out in a duel with his dad's Franco-Prussian sabers. While trying to sell the car in Los Angeles, Vera reads that Haskell's rich father is dying, and schemes for Al to impersonate the long-lost son and inherit the estate. While waiting for the old man to die, they sit in a dinghy hotel room and argue, until the drunken Vera goes in the other room to call the police after he refuses to go along with the scheme, and Al accidently kills her when he pulls on the telephone cord not seeing that it was wrapped around her neck.
His destination is now on a detour, as he decides he can't see Sue like he is, and turns back to the diner in Nevada, where he is hitching a ride in the rain back east, feeling only bad things can happen to him, and as luck would have it, he is picked up by the police in the film's closing shot.
Al has made his case to the audience, and like a true noir protagonist, life has kicked him where he is most vulnerable. His weak character and not his criminal act of stealing Haskell's identity are the cause of his downfall. His struggle against fate, is doomed from the start of his journey. His doom when rejected by the girl he loved cannot be overturned. What makes the film inevitably pessimistic, is the mixture of passion and foolishness that follow the hero wherever he goes, as he sees before him how the left and right coast hold the same dim promise for his future; that the road is dark even when it is sunny.
Since fiction is not necessarily stranger than life, this nightmarish tale echoes what happened to Tom Neal in real life, as he would serve six years in prison for killing his wife.
Ulmer has created an unusually bleak character study, that plays like a mesmerizing confession, as the hero has the intangible quality of innocence going for him, which adds a seductive quality to his character for those in the audience, such as me, who can appreciate his natural inclination not to trust the authorities, even when that seems to be the most rational thing to do in the dire predicament he was in. For some, being outside the system, is as natural as walking in the fog. To understand that, is to begin to understand the power of a noir film, probably the most original cinematic work the American film industry has produced. The noir hero is just not like the other Hollywood heroes; he does not see the world in technicolor.
REVIEWED ON 12/9/99 GRADE: B+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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