Detour

BFI Film Classics

by Noah Isenberg

Long considered an unpolished gem of film noir, the private treasure of film buffs, cinephiles and critics, Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945) has recently earned a new wave of recognition. In the words of film Critic David Thomson, it is simply “beyond remarkable.”  The only B-picture to make it into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, Detour has outrun its fate as the bastard child of one of Hollywood’s lowliest studios.  Ulmer’s film follows, in flashback, the journey of Al Roberts (Tom Neal), a pianist hitching from New York to California to join his girlfriend Sue (Claudia Drake), a singer gone to seek her fortune in Hollywood.  In classic noir style, Detour  features mysterious deaths, changes of identity, an unforgettable femme fatale called Vera (Ann Savage), and, in Roberts, a wretched, masochistic antihero.

Noah Isenberg’s study of Detour draws on a vast array of archival sources, unpublished letters and interviews, to provide an animated and thorough account of the film’s production history, its critical reception, its afterlife (including various remakes) and the different ways in which the film has been understood since its release.  He devotes significant attention to each of the key players in the film--the crew as well as the principal actors--while charting the uneasy transformation of Martin Goldsmith’s pulp novel into Ulmer’s signature film, the disagreements between the director and writer, and the severe financial and formal limitations with which Ulmer grappled.  The story that Isenberg tells, rich in historical and critical insight, replicates the briskness of a B-movie.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Noir, Crime

105 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2008

About the author

Noah Isenberg is director of screen studies and professor of culture and media at The New School, the author of We'll Always Have Casablanca, Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins, and editor of Weimar Cinema, and the recipient of an NEH Public Scholar Award. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a spiffy little book about a spiffy little movie. Isenberg is a very smart, engaging writer and thankfully he didn't let himself get lost in academic jargon or pomo navel gazing, he just waded through reams of material and came out with a compulsively readable investigation of one of my all time favorite movies. Though some fool auteurist called the film "beneath trash," it has really stood the test of time. In my occasionally humble opinion, so will this book.

Isenberg gets bonus points for including so much excellent dialogue from Ulmer's classic. A particular favorite: Ann Savage tells Tom Neal, "Not only don't you have any scruples, you don't have any brains!" For more on the divine Ms.Savage, read Eddie Muller's excellent Dark City Dames. Also see her in Guy Maddin's ever-amazing My Winnipeg. You won't be disappointed!

[Justin Decloux · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid and well researched. It could have used a little more personality.

[mattea]

i know the guy who wrote this woah

[Emma Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

My cinema studies class just finished the film Detour, and this book was assigned for our discussion. I absolutely loved the film (10/10 recommend)! Reading Noah Isenberg's book alongside watching the film was interesting because it gives insight on the movie's production history. As someone who doesn't watch many B-films, I loved hearing the story behind a movie that defied odds. If you ever watch Detour, definitely read this book!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Detour is on my short list of all-time favorite films, so it was almost guaranteed that I would like this book. This is the first book-length study of the film, and it taught me a great deal. I was puzzled, though, by some of the information that the book did not contain. For example, Detour is the lone acknowledged classic to come from a Poverty Row film studio, so author Noah Isenberg spends considerable time discussing director Edgar G. Ulmer's genius for making the most of a small budget. Why, then, does Isenberg not mention that the Lincoln convertible used throughout the movie was actually Ulmer's own car? I can think of two reasons why Isenberg might have omitted this fact: (1) It might be apocryhpal, in which case he ought to say so for the benefit of misinformed people like me; or (2) This fact is such common knowledge that Isenberg might have thought it not worth repeating, but this just makes Isenberg himself seem uninformed. One more example: Detour contains a famous flub (more than one, actually) in which a flipped negative results in cars with right-side steering wheels being driven down the left side of the highway. Isenberg considers the strange possibility that Ulmer did this as a joke, but he ignores the artistic explanation, suggested by Roger Ebert in 1998, that Ulmer did this because he wanted his cars moving from right to left across the screen, given that the film's protagonist is hitchhiking from New York to California. Perhaps Isenberg's decision not to mention this possibility has something to do with his strange dismissal of Ebert as a banal television personality.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting insights into this very unusual film. I also appreciated the information about the production that was incorporated into the analysis of the film.