Noir November: Detour
Written by Cameron Geiser
Every day for the month of November, Cameron Geiser is reviewing a noir film (classic or neo) for Noir November. Today covers the Poverty Row classic Detour.
Much like the previous film in our Noir-Vember series, Double Indemnity, the two characters that this film focuses on are the despicable, down and out, and baroquely written Al Roberts (Tom Neal) and Vera (Ann Savage). Like a condensed version of that same film, Detour is an oddity in film noir, but one that remains relevant because of it’s flaws, not despite them. Made on a shoestring budget and supposedly shot in just six days, Detour plays the same game as the big films out there but it acts as a distilled version that’s boiled down to the fine essence of what makes a good Noir film.
With Edgar G. Ulmer behind the camera, a B-movie director from Hollywood’s poverty row studios known for turning out flicks with a tenacious speed, the film’s limitations became opportunities to lean into style over logical storytelling. You see, the whole film is near perfect nightmare logic. Al Roberts is our audience surrogate, and from whom we receive the narration as he tries to divulge his version of the events taking place. Al’s a pianist for a nightclub where he pines for one of the singers named Sue. He wants to get married, but she leaves for the West Coast. So after a while he decides to follow her out West too. Though he doesn’t have much money and hitchhikes from New York to Los Angeles. In fact, there’s a lot of emphasis on the daily anxieties of having too little. “Money. You know what that is, the stuff you never have enough of. Little green things with George Washington's picture that men slave for, commit crimes for, die for. It's the stuff that has caused more trouble in the world than anything else we ever invented, simply because there's too little of it.”
Ann Savage and Tom Neal in Detour.
In Arizona Al catches a ride from a guy named Haskell (Edmund MacDonald) with deep scratches on his hand. Haskell tells him the wound was inflicted from a ferocious woman hitchhiker with claws before telling a bit of his own backstory too. However, it isn’t long before Haskell pops some pills and switches seats with Al to drive the night shift. When Al attempts to pull the top on Haskell’s convertible up in a rainstorm he fails and tries to rouse Haskell awake- but his lifeless body slumps out of the car with his head hitting a rock on the side of the road to boot. Claiming that the cops wouldn’t believe him, Al dumps the body and takes Haskell’s wallet, car, and identity before fleeing the scene. After crossing over into California Al picks up another hitchhiker, a younger woman, half asleep and as Al describes her “She looked like she'd just been thrown off the crummiest freight train in the world.” After a few moments in the car Vera fully awakens and shouts out accusations, “Where'd you leave his body? Where did you leave the owner of this car? Your name's not Haskell!” Al quickly realizes that he’d picked up the same woman with claws that Haskell had mentioned. Al tries to explain Haskell’s death to her, but she won’t have it and blackmails him by threatening to turn him over to the police once they reach Los Angeles.
Once they do make it into L.A. Vera discovers that Haskell’s estranged wealthy father, that he’d mentioned to both hitchhikers, is looking to reconnect before death. So Vera proposes that Al continue acting as Haskell to fool his father into relinquishing his wealth to his long lost son and new fiancé. It all goes to hell while the two try to wait it out in a cheap hotel though. Vera, as it happens, was also a lousy drunk who in the thick of a binge again threatens Al with calling the police. In a panic, he attempts to pull the phone cord off the wall from inside the bathroom, but strangles Vera by mistake in doing so. Back on the road Al overhears that the police are on the lookout for Haskell for the murder of his fiancé, and Al anxiously makes his way back to the small diner in Reno that he started the film from, sweating with guilt and paranoia.
For such a slapdash Noir flick, Detour has just enough in the tank to stand out from its peers. Tom Neal and Ann Savage as Al and Vera play off each other perfectly, complimenting each character’s strengths and weaknesses, while maintaining a grimy moral gray zone for both. It also doesn’t hurt that this trim Noir is also only sixty-eight minutes long. It’s certainly worth seeking out.
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.