Just in time for the end of Knowing Noir, my November viewing has brought me a combination of traits that has been elusive so far in this series. It's been difficult for me to find a movie that both really worked for me, and also clearly demonstrated what I think of as the core characteristics of noir. But Detour has answered the call.
Also one of the shortest movies in this series at only 67 minutes, Edmund G. Ulmer's 1945 film is a simple, straightforward movie that has noir tropes galore. "Simple and straightforward" are adjectives someone would rarely ascribe to film noir, but I've determined they are things my simple little brain desperately needs.
It's the story of a man named Al Roberts (Tom Neal), a New York piano player who is hitchhiking his way across the country to be with his girlfriend, Sue (Claudia Drake), who left New York to pursue Hollywood stardom. Al is picked up by a man going the same direction and with the same destination, but Charles Haskell Jr. (Edmund MacDonald) dies mysteriously while Al is taking his turn driving, after popping a number of pills. (So I guess maybe it's not that mysterious.) Al panics when he realizes he will be blamed for murdering Haskell if he notifies the police, so he hides the body and assumes the man's identity in case someone should pull him over and ask why he's driving the car. He hopes to ditch the whole ruse when he reaches California and picks up with Sue again.
His fatal flaw is that he's got the desire to pay forward all the favors others did him when they picked him up to give him a ride. He picks up hitchhiker Vera (Ann Savage) at one of his next stops, and as luck would have it, she recognizes he's not Haskell because she rode part of the way with Haskell as part of her own cross country excursion. Trouble ensues.
I can't/won't discuss too much more of the plot because there isn't all that much more without getting into spoilers. If I had been tasked with summarizing other films in this series, I'd probably need at least two more paragraphs just to lay the groundwork of what was going on. Its (I'll use the word again) simplicity is Detour's most deceptively brilliant aspect.
The next would have to be Ann Savage. She's a whip-smart femme fatale who has a withering comment coming out of the side of her mouth at any given moment. She reminded me a bit of what I know of Mae West, which is not all that much -- I know her famous line of dialogue is "Come up and see me sometime." (A little googling shows me that also become her signature song.) Assuming we think of West as a sort of tart and tough woman who can take care of herself, while also having a gift for linguistics, just check out a couple of the key quips from Savage in Detour:
"What did you do, kiss him with a wrench?"
And then later, referring to the same deceased Charles Haskell, after Al protests his innocence:
"Sure, sure, he died of old age."
And later, while drunk:
"Am I tight? As a primadonna's corset."
Savage's performance may be one of the most enjoyable in the whole series. While most of the leads and almost as many of the femme fatales have blended into the woodwork as this series has gone on, Savage will always be easy for me to remember in Detour.
Tom Neal's Al Roberts was better than the average protagonist in this series as well, with a couple of his own good, hard-boiled noir comments, such as:
"She looked as though she'd just been thrown off the crummiest freight train in the world."
And:
"My goose was cooked."
And a good description of money and its meaning in the lives of the people who seek it out:
"Little green things with George Washington's picture, that men slave for, commit crimes for, die for."
The physical environment of a noir film is also well established here. Before he and Sue leave New York, they walk through an environment that is so suffused with fog that you could easily mistake it for London. The film also relies on silhouettes several times, notably the backup musicians as Sue sings, and there are even venetian blinds in the hotel room where Al and Vera stay, through which he furtively looks for anyone following them.
One of my favorite intentional uses of noir techniques was a moment when Al is in a Nevada cafe, pondering the events that have come before (but which we have yet to see). Ulmer darkens everything around his protagonist and lights only his eyes, a sort of beacon of last hope that we know will also soon be snuffed.
I could continue to sing the film's praises but it's a Saturday morning and I have a busy day today. Just know that this is exactly the type of noir I hoped to find when I first envisioned this series.
But I've still got one more month to go, and that means a date with the man who also provided inspiration for this series: Humphrey Bogart. As of right now, I've got something interesting planned to close the series, but I won't reveal it now in case it doesn't work out.
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