list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Detour on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Detour/8886/default.aspx Title: Detour
Year: 1946
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Plot: Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour begins when hitchhiker Al Roberts (Tom Neal) accepts a ride from affable gambler Charles Haskell Jr. (Edmund MacDonald). When Haskell suffers a fatal heart attack, Roberts, afraid that he'll be accused of murder, disposes of the body, takes the man's clothes and wallet, and begins driving the car himself. He picks up beautiful but sullen Vera (Ann Savage), who suddenly breaks the silence by asking, "What did you do with the body?" It turns out that Vera had earlier accepted a ride from Haskell and has immediately spotted Roberts as a ringer. Holding the threat of summoning the police over his head, Vera forces Roberts to continue his pose so that he can collect a legacy from Haskell's millionaire father, who hasn't seen his son in years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 3
Number of Lists: 13
Number of blog posts: 2
Number of discussion threads: 1
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:28:49 GMTDetour1946Edgar G. UlmerEdgar G. Ulmer's Detour begins when hitchhiker Al Roberts (<a href="/players/P____52030/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Tom Neal</a>) accepts a ride from affable gambler Charles Haskell Jr. (<a href="/players/P____44143/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Edmund MacDonald</a>). When Haskell suffers a fatal heart attack, Roberts, afraid that he'll be accused of murder, disposes of the body, takes the man's clothes and wallet, and begins driving the car himself. He picks up beautiful but sullen Vera (<a href="/players/P____63310/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Ann Savage</a>), who suddenly breaks the silence by asking, "What did you do with the body?" It turns out that Vera had earlier accepted a ride from Haskell and has immediately spotted Roberts as a ringer. Holding the threat of summoning the police over his head, Vera forces Roberts to continue his pose so that he can collect a legacy from Haskell's millionaire father, who hasn't seen his son in years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide3Slightly Tagged (1-5)13213http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/t24426lhw8y.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Detour/8886/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/groups/Top_5/Re_Top_5_Actresses_in_Classic_Film_Noir/190/9119/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: Jymkata
Post To: Top 5
Post Date: 5/21/2007 6:34:35 PM
Body: Wow, great topic, since the women really make film noir sexy and mysterious 1. I loooove Gloria Grahame in everything so I guess I have to cheat and say that I would put three of her noir performances in a tie- tough and sexy Debby Marsh in The Big Heat, scheming Irene Neves in Sudden Fear, and complicated Laurel Grey in In a Lonely Place2. I think Joan Crawford gets a bad rap because of her personal life, but I think she makes every movie she's in better. I'm going to cheat again and list two favorites, as Myra Hudson in Sudden Fear and as the indomitable Mildred Pierce3. I agree with you Jim that Jane Greer's entrance in Out of the Past is one of the most memorable, maybe only rivaled by Lana Turner's in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Jane's performance makes that movie all the more mysterious and menacing. 4. Gene Tierney is a great noir actress as well. She is the haunting prescence in one of my all-time favs., Laura and she's great in the noirs Whirlpool and Where The Sidewalk Ends as well as the noirish Leave her to Heaven, 5. If you are talking about single performances it would be hard to beat the portrayal of a vicious femme fatale that Ann Savage gives in Detour. You don't root for Vera and she isn't glamorous, but she catches Tom Neal in her web and leads him to his destruction. Maybe Peggy Cummings in Gun Crazy comes close. Lauren Bacall in Dark Passage and Key Largo, Veronica Lake in This Gun for Hire, Joan Bennett in Woman in the Window, and Barbra Stanwyck in Double Indemnity are my alternates.
]]>Mon, 21 May 2007 22:34:35 GMTJymkataTop 55/21/2007 6:34:35 PMWow, great topic, since the women really make film noir sexy and mysterious 1. I loooove Gloria Grahame in everything so I guess I have to cheat and say that I would put three of her noir performances in a tie- tough and sexy Debby Marsh in The Big Heat, scheming Irene Neves in Sudden Fear, and complicated Laurel Grey in In a Lonely Place2. I think Joan Crawford gets a bad rap because of her personal life, but I think she makes every movie she&#39;s in better. I&#39;m going to cheat again and list two favorites, as Myra Hudson in Sudden Fear and as the indomitable Mildred Pierce3. I agree with you Jim that Jane Greer&#39;s entrance in Out of the Past is one of the most memorable, maybe only rivaled by Lana Turner&#39;s in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Jane&#39;s performance makes that movie all the more mysterious and menacing. 4. Gene Tierney is a great noir actress as well. She is the haunting prescence in one of my all-time favs., Laura and she&#39;s great in the noirs Whirlpool and Where The Sidewalk Ends as well as the noirish Leave her to Heaven, 5. If you are talking about single performances it would be hard to beat the portrayal of a vicious femme fatale that Ann Savage gives in Detour. You don&#39;t root for Vera and she isn&#39;t glamorous, but she catches Tom Neal in her web and leads him to his destruction. Maybe Peggy Cummings in Gun Crazy comes close. Lauren Bacall in Dark Passage and Key Largo, Veronica Lake in This Gun for Hire, Joan Bennett in Woman in the Window, and Barbra Stanwyck in Double Indemnity are my alternates. http://www.spout.com/blogs/sarcastig/archive/2007/5/14/8776.aspx Post By: sarcastig
Post To: As cool as a Fruitstand
Post Date: 5/14/2007 5:34:00 PM
Body: There's something about classic noir, and Detour is as classic as they get: cynically narrated from when it's already all gone to shit by an everyman, sad-sack, doomed protagonist. The booze is plentiful, the women are just as cynical as the men and much more manipulative, and boy do I love it.That's probably why noir is my favorite genre. It's not so much that many of my favorite films are noirs: the selection at the top is a little eclectic. It's just that I haven't met a noir yet I didn't at least enjoy.Detour's a perfect introduction. It's short (about 70 minutes, still impressive for a film shot in 6 days), the sets and dingy and the rear projection can either be called clunky or appropriately claustrophobic. And most important of all: it conveys the basic message of noir: life's a bitch, and then you die. Or, as it's said in this film: "That's life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you".Sidenote: the origin of the forever bad endings was of course that under the production code, no crime could go unpunished: at the very least, a guilty conscience should drive the culprit crazy, like in "Scarlet Street". I'm generally opposed to censorship, but there really is something to be said for the production code: not just because it forced filmmakers to be creative (see: It happened one night) but also because without it, the cynical world of film noir would have been much different.Most notable about this one? Aside from the fact that Tom Neal makes me think of Kurt Russell (and wouldn't he make a great noir hero?), I loved the character of Vera, "as rotten in the morning as she'd been the night before". Women in noirs are generally bad news, but at least they have a mind of their own.(here's bright lights on the film) Syndicated Feed From:As cool as a Fruitstand
]]>Mon, 14 May 2007 21:34:00 GMTsarcastigAs cool as a Fruitstand5/14/2007 5:34:00 PMThere's something about classic noir, and Detour is as classic as they get: cynically narrated from when it's already all gone to shit by an everyman, sad-sack, doomed protagonist. The booze is plentiful, the women are just as cynical as the men and much more manipulative, and boy do I love it.That's probably why noir is my favorite genre. It's not so much that many of my favorite films are noirs: the selection at the top is a little eclectic. It's just that I haven't met a noir yet I didn't at least enjoy.Detour's a perfect introduction. It's short (about 70 minutes, still impressive for a film shot in 6 days), the sets and dingy and the rear projection can either be called clunky or appropriately claustrophobic. And most important of all: it conveys the basic message of noir: life's a bitch, and then you die. Or, as it's said in this film: "That's life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you".Sidenote: the origin of the forever bad endings was of course that under the production code, no crime could go unpunished: at the very least, a guilty conscience should drive the culprit crazy, like in "Scarlet Street". I'm generally opposed to censorship, but there really is something to be said for the production code: not just because it forced filmmakers to be creative (see: It happened one night) but also because without it, the cynical world of film noir would have been much different.Most notable about this one? Aside from the fact that Tom Neal makes me think of Kurt Russell (and wouldn't he make a great noir hero?), I loved the character of Vera, "as rotten in the morning as she'd been the night before". Women in noirs are generally bad news, but at least they have a mind of their own.(here's bright lights on the film) Syndicated Feed From:As cool as a Fruitstand http://www.spout.com/blogs/jimbell/archive/2007/4/21/7356.aspx Post By: JimBell
Post To: JimBell Blog
Post Date: 4/21/2007 2:55:00 AM
Body: Detour (1945) has been declared a B-movie classic and a film noir classic, and I love film noir; therefore, I thought the movie was fantastic—not. The argument is that this movie is so bad that it’s good, but maybe it is so bad that it’s not very good at all. The movie was shot in 6 days on a severely limited budget (one figure is $117,000) by a B-movie director who has become idolized, Edgar G. Ulmer. The sets are terrible—which leads some folks to say they give the movie a surreal, dream-like quality. But maybe they just look like cheap sets. The back projection as Al Roberts (Tom Neal) hitches and drives from New York to LA is amateurish (nothing was shot on location)—which leads some people to say that the phoney roads behind the cars creates a claustrophobic air appropriate for a movie about a man hounded by fate. But maybe the rear projection is just amateurish and distracting. Sometimes the cars are reversed, with the driver on the right instead of the left, probably because Ulmer decided after shooting to run the stock through reversed in order to make the cars look like they were going from east to west, from NY to LA. Some say this is a wonderful example of Ulmer’s style-over-substance approach. Maybe it is so clumsy that you would not get away with it in high school film study class (well, ok, I let my class get away with it, but it was because they were making a comedy). The acting is so bad that some people class it not as B-movie acting but as C. It is not so much that the acting is that bad but rather that the characters are mono-dimensional, so what would any actor have to work with. Al is a type—a weak and submissive man; Vera (Ann Savage) is a type—a rotten and dominating woman. Some critics say these are delightful archetypes. But I found them irritating enough to fast forward for the first time ever in a film noir. The movie concludes with Al’s voice-over stating the movie’s theme: “Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all.” Al says he was simply on the way to his marry his true love when a fellow he got a ride from died, fell out of the car and hit his head, and left Al looking so guilty he had to take the man’s clothes, money, and car. And so it goes. Al blames everything he does wrong on “fate.” What position does the film itself take on this topic? If you have fallen for the canonization of Detour, you will make the case that Al is an unreliable narrator, appearing to tell us a true story, but actually twisting the truth to make himself look the victim of fate rather than his weakness. But maybe the film simply doesn’t give any significant clues one way or the other.Jim Bell
]]>Sat, 21 Apr 2007 06:55:00 GMTJimBellJimBell Blog4/21/2007 2:55:00 AMDetour (1945) has been declared a B-movie classic and a film noir classic, and I love film noir; therefore, I thought the movie was fantastic&mdash;not. The argument is that this movie is so bad that it&rsquo;s good, but maybe it is so bad that it&rsquo;s not very good at all. The movie was shot in 6 days on a severely limited budget (one figure is $117,000) by a B-movie director who has become idolized, Edgar G. Ulmer. The sets are terrible&mdash;which leads some folks to say they give the movie a surreal, dream-like quality. But maybe they just look like cheap sets. The back projection as Al Roberts (Tom Neal) hitches and drives from New York to LA is amateurish (nothing was shot on location)&mdash;which leads some people to say that the phoney roads behind the cars creates a claustrophobic air appropriate for a movie about a man hounded by fate. But maybe the rear projection is just amateurish and distracting. Sometimes the cars are reversed, with the driver on the right instead of the left, probably because Ulmer decided after shooting to run the stock through reversed in order to make the cars look like they were going from east to west, from NY to LA. Some say this is a wonderful example of Ulmer&rsquo;s style-over-substance approach. Maybe it is so clumsy that you would not get away with it in high school film study class (well, ok, I let my class get away with it, but it was because they were making a comedy). The acting is so bad that some people class it not as B-movie acting but as C. It is not so much that the acting is that bad but rather that the characters are mono-dimensional, so what would any actor have to work with. Al is a type&mdash;a weak and submissive man; Vera (Ann Savage) is a type&mdash;a rotten and dominating woman. Some critics say these are delightful archetypes. But I found them irritating enough to fast forward for the first time ever in a film noir. The movie concludes with Al&rsquo;s voice-over stating the movie&rsquo;s theme: &ldquo;Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all.&rdquo; Al says he was simply on the way to his marry his true love when a fellow he got a ride from died, fell out of the car and hit his head, and left Al looking so guilty he had to take the man&rsquo;s clothes, money, and car. And so it goes. Al blames everything he does wrong on &ldquo;fate.&rdquo; What position does the film itself take on this topic? If you have fallen for the canonization of Detour, you will make the case that Al is an unreliable narrator, appearing to tell us a true story, but actually twisting the truth to make himself look the victim of fate rather than his weakness. But maybe the film simply doesn&rsquo;t give any significant clues one way or the other.Jim Bell http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/murder/MemberTagFilms.aspxmurder
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