Detour

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Detour (1945)

American film noir.

Told in flashback, New York nightclub pianist Al Roberts hitchhikes to Hollywood to join his girl Sue. On a rainy night, the sleazy gambler he’s riding with mysteriously dies. Rattled and afraid of the police, Roberts takes the man’s identity. But thanks to the mysterious Vera, who seems to know all about his true identity, Roberts’ every move plunges him deeper into trouble.

Contemporary reviews noted the effective atmosphere that director Edgar G. Ulmer achieved on a limited budget, and the film is considered by many modern sources to be a major example of film noir.

In 1992, Detour was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”

In 2007, Richard Corliss, the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment and a notable film critic for Time magazine, ranked Savage’s portrayal of Vera number 6 on his list of the “Top 25 Greatest Villains” in cinema history, placing her just behind Barbara Stanwyck’s character Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944)

Interesting Trivia

The car owned by the character Charlie Haskell and later driven by Al Roberts is itself an integral part of the film’s plot and is certainly the most memorable prop item in the production. The automobile is a customized 1941 Lincoln Continental V-12 convertible, a base model of a “Cabriolet” but one that features bolted-on rear wheel-well covers and some exterior components added later from Lincoln’s limited 1942 version of the same model

In the late 1950s, star Tom Neal was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of his wife and spent several years in prison. Detour was remade in 1992 by Wade Williams and starred Tom Neal, Jr.

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