Open Mike: 'Detour,' the Quintessential B-Movie Film Noir

This essay contains spoilers. I'll be assuming you know the noir classic B-movie Detour already—after all, you've had since 1945 to watch it. If you'd rather not know the plot, don't click through.

First of all, this is just one interpretation of this movie. I'm not arguing and I'm not trying to talk you into anything. So if you don't agree, no harm and no foul. We're just talking. Anybody can interpret art any way they want. What follows is only my opinion of this movie.

I'm a fan of film noir. I don't know much about it, and I'm not a big movie buff in general, but I enjoy noir. I like the "underbelly of life" plots, the '30s-through-'50s cultural cues (everything's the same but everything's different, not just the haircuts, clothes and cars but the language, the assumptions, and the way people interact with each other), and the black-and-white cinematography. I pay attention to cinematographers. John Alton is one favorite—he even wrote a book on lighting called Painting With Light, half of which is hopelessly out of date and half of which is timeless and a treasure, still useful for still photographers.

The noir film Detour is a cult classic...a B-movie that should have sidled into obscurity but instead has seen its reputation grow over time, earning some big-name fans. It starts out with a tramp in a diner causing a scene over a tune on the jukebox. A patron and the proprietor calm him down, and he settles morosely into a glum rehearsal of his memories. We're about to find out why he's depressed and down and out. 

There are various urban legends about this movie. It was supposedly made in three days and cost three twenties and a ten to make. Or some such. Actually it's just an ordinary B-movie made by one of the independent studios of "Poverty Row," which didn't have the resources of the big studios...or the restrictions imposed by them. But it's not that bad. It was shot quickly, yes—28 days—and there are various signs of corner-cutting throughout, but it's not the shabbiest film ever made, despite the director's many flubs and errors (in the beginning, the director reverses the film so the passenger side of a moving car can face the audience at the same time the car is seen driving from right to left—East to West). They paid for a popular song, which wasn't cheap, and Edgar G. Ulmer, the director, who had artistic aspirations, gave screen time to the talents of the musical director (Leo Erdody, whose hands are seen tickling the ivories) and Claudia Drake, the actress who plays the nightclub singer. The cinematographer for Detour was Benjamin H. Kline, who adroitly makes the most of a limited number of sets. The movie isn't chockablock with beautiful shots, but there are enough to occupy the discerning eye.

It's often repeated that this movie is told in flashback, and it mostly is, but that's not 100% true—remember, the very ending is a flash forward. It's still the same guy, thinking. The flashback is signified by the diner going dark while the drifter's troubled eyes remain lit—a device that will recur all the way to the end of the movie. It's a simple (and inexpensive) way to tell viewers that we're diving into a man's head, but it works.

Tom Neal as Al Roberts in Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour, 1945

The plot is tortured and implausible in parts but simple. A small-time piano player with nothing better to do than to hitchhike from New York to Los Angeles to try to win back an ex-girlfriend is picked up by a high-rolling gambler in a beautiful Lincoln. (The vehicle, by the way, was the director's own car—although two cars are used for the "part" in the movie. Probably because the director didn't want his baby to get wet in the rainstorm scene!) The man dies of natural causes, or so we believe, and the hitchhiker assumes his identity, because he thinks he's going to be blamed, he tells us, and that would be very unfair, and he wants to get away.

From there his luck goes from bad to worse. He picks up a young woman hitchhiking (while, you remember, supposedly he's on a quest to win back the love of his life), and she turns out to be the one person within a hundred miles who knew the real Charles Haskell, the gambler who died. So she knows instantly—probably even from the time she first saw him in the gas station—that Al Roberts, the opportunistic hitchhiker, is an imposter and probably a murderer. She then blackmails him, holds him hostage, and tries to get him in even deeper with a bigger criminal play that appears even less likely to succeed than the assumed identity did.

Ann Savage plays a harpy, with such unrelenting venom that the viewer's dislike for her character is palpable. "Harpy" means "a cruel, grasping woman." The word comes from a creature from Greek and Roman mythology that was half human, half bird, and is a personification of storm winds! The definition fits here—Vera is a one-woman tornado all right.

He ends up killing her, too—also innocently, at least according to the surface plot. So he's been a victim of improbable fate not once, not twice, but three times, and he's doomed to wander until the law finally catches up to him. Poor Al. Poor, hard-luck Al, blameless for everything that happens to him.

Not so fast
But that's just the story we're told in the film. Is it really the true tale?

The review by the late, great movie critic Roger Ebert cut right to quick of this dark little film for me. He writes:

Most critics of Detour have taken Al's story at face value: He was unlucky in love, he lost the good girl and was savaged by the bad girl, he was an innocent bystander who looked guilty even to himself. But the critic Andrew Britton argues a more intriguing theory in Ian Cameron's Book of Film Noir. He emphasizes that the narration is addressed directly to us: We're not hearing what happened, but what Al Roberts wants us to believe happened.

This insight is what brought this movie alive for me. It's the kind of insight that will seem self-evident if it's already how you interpret the film, and far-fetched if you've been inclined to accept the action at face value.

In Andrew Britton's view, the tramp in the diner is a so-called unreliable narrator. The term is from literature, and means that the narrator has an agenda—he or she is not giving us the truth, but rather a version of events that might or might not explain them accurately. What we're seeing in the film, according to this theory, is not the truth but the version of events that Al Roberts, the hitchhiking piano player, has worked out in his head—partly to justify his actions to others, no doubt, but also partly to justify his actions to himself. We're reminded of this several times in the course of the film when the director cuts back to Al Roberts' troubled spotlit eyes in the diner...this is a flashback, yes, but it's his thoughts we're seeing—it's from his thoughts that all the action is derived. What we're seeing in the action of the film is not objective reality. It's Al's desperate revision of an even darker history, one that could get him in real trouble. But revisionist history it is.

Nitroglycerin pills were a common treatment for angina—heart pain—that would have been familiar to audiences in 1945. Haskell, the gambler in the Lincoln, is seen popping little pills twice, and then is obviously dead before he tumbles from the car—a hard rain and several shakes and calls having been not enough to revive him. But notice that he conveniently bumps his head against a rock when he hits the ground. A subtle detail? Well, it jumped out at me. Why the rock? Well, it could be Al Roberts' attempt in his mind to justify the fact that Haskell's body will be found with forensic evidence of a blow to the head.

Then note how emphatic and carefully worked out Roberts' reasoning is regarding why he chose to adopt Haskell's identity and appropriate all his belongings. This soliloquy doesn't have the sound of panic—rather, it's logical and thorough, and the care with which it's worked out sounds more like a well-rehearsed argument in retrospect. Not once (that I noticed) does he consider doing the right thing and getting help or reporting the death, or express regret for not doing so. Again, possibly it's because we're in Al Robert's head and he's been working on his version of events over and over again. As a guilty man would, if he thought he was going to have to explain his actions someday with his very freedom on the line.

Yet another telltale is his apparent unconcern, in his telling of events, with keeping any of the money. Which doesn't ring true at all: $768, the dead man's bankroll, is the equivalent of more than $11,000 today, and the $1,800 offer from the car dealer that Vera is so scornful of amounts to $26,600 in today's dollars. Add it up and that's a year's salary for many people. For a penniless guy reduced to hitchhiking to make his way to Los Angeles on very slender potential, this is a significant gold mine. Yet in our story he's supposedly just going to ditch the car and is all too ready to willingly turn the whole bankroll over to Vera. Sure, Al. Isn't that all just a little too selfless to be the truth?

If we're on to this thread at all, the movie hammers home the implausibility of the flashback story we're being told with a second killing that is far more implausible than the first one. The domineering Vera has virtually imprisoned the supposedly passive and hapless Al. The hotel room they've rented has a phone with the world's longest cord, and when drunk Vera escapes to the bedroom clutching the phone to call the police and rat him out, Roberts chooses to pull mightily on the cord under the door, little suspecting—according to him—that the cord had become wrapped around Vera's neck as she swooned onto the bed.

Here's where even the gullible viewer ought to be getting a little suspicious, and maybe wising up. Never mind that hotel rooms weren't key-lockable from the inside even in the 1940s because of fire regulations. Wouldn't he simply pull the phone cord from the wall to prevent her from calling the police, like you've seen in a thousand other old movies? Why try to pull the phone back from her when he can't get it from under the door anyway?

Here's another clue: The harpy aspect of Vera herself. In film noir, the classic femme fatale often has an undeniable allure. The tension is that she's calculating and dangerous, but also beautiful and desirable. Here, there's none of that—Vera is a relentless scourge, all while Roberts himself is being compliant and generous, agreeable and reasonable. What is that if not a one-sided story? The kind of version of another person that someone would try to present if they were trying to make themselves look good and the other person look bad. To drive the point home, Vera, who is vain (Ann Savage was 24 when she played the part, although she looks and sounds much older), tries repeatedly to demonstrate a little flirtatiousness, but neither Roberts nor the viewer buys it for one second. And each time, she immediately gives up and lapses quickly back into her bitter, vindictive, and domineering attitude. More to be suspicious of, if you ask me. There's very little femme in her fatale.

What's the truth?
Here's the likely truth that should dawn on the viewer at some point in the proceedings: This entitled, morose little weasel with his victimization complex first conked Haskell over the head with a rock to steal his bankroll, his car, his identity, and even the clothes on his back, so that, even if he trades the car for another, he could roll into Hollywood looking like a swell for his ex; then, when he had the bad luck to accidentally pick up the one hitchhiker who could cause problems for him, he put up with her for a while but eventually strangled her with a telephone cord. In both cases, he's justified himself to himself by telling stories in his head...and that's the story we're seeing go by on the screen. Is that what screenwriter Martin Goldsmith had in mind? I don't know.

As noted earlier, even the last scene is not real, but speculative. The voiceover—and those spotlit eyes again—makes it perfectly clear that he's still in the diner thinking his lugubrious thoughts. What we're seeing when the police come for him is only his fear of what might happen...even as we're hearing from him, yet again, how unfair it will all be to him. Woe is Al.

We all tell ourselves stories about ourselves in our own heads, and in so doing we can easily be unreliable narrators too. We have a natural tendency to cast our own actions in a forgiving, favorable light, and to heap whatever blame there might be on others, casually ascribing everything from bad manners to bad motives to someone, anyone, else. It's human nature. But most people only go so far with this...otherwise, it becomes too implausible even for ourselves! But when someone is truly spiritually sick—concerned only with themselves, full of entitlement and self-pity, and willing to serve their own interests no matter what, even above someone else's life and death—well, then you have a sad, sorry tale. Not to mention a heck of a flick.

Anyway, whether you buy this interpretation or not, it's what makes this movie so interesting to me. Because once you accept that what you're seeing is Roberts going over his self-serving version of events in his own head, then you have to go back over all the action in your mind and try to untangle likely truth from his prevaricating fabrications. That's also something that we often have to do when we hear stories. Which parts of this story really happened that way, and what parts are the fevered imagination of this selfish, greedy little man who thought he should get away with murder?

Andrew Britton's unreliable narrator insight that I got from Roger Ebert turns this movie from a standard noir story with a clumsy, labored plot into a subtle and fascinating psychodrama. I for one like it much better that way. I'm already looking forward to watching Detour again some day.

Life imitates art
Even the real-life backstory of this B-movie classic continues the psychological complexity. Both stars, who seem so perfect for these particular roles, ended up in humdrum jobs—Tom Neal as a gardener and landscaper, Ann Savage as a secretarial worker and receptionist. Neal, the Yale Law School grad who plays Al Roberts, was a boxer, and had a temper, and got himself blacklisted from Hollywood for his violent outbursts. He ended up shooting his second wife, possibly getting away with cold-blooded murder when the jury only convicted him of involuntary manslaughter. He went to prison for it, and got out early, only to die abruptly only months after his release. Of a heart attack, the same thing we're led to believe Haskell died of in the movie...

...Although that time it was no doubt true.

Mike

Detour is available on Amazon Prime and other services as well, as a newly cleaned-up version on DVD and Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection, and for free on YouTube. Disclaimer: IANAFC—"I am not a film critic."  :-)

CORRECTION: This version has been changed. An earlier version of this post attributed Andrew Britton's interpretation to Roger Ebert. Thanks to several alert readers for setting me straight.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Mark Roberts: "Coincidentally, I was just watching a BBC documentary by Rich Hall on the history of the American road movie and Detour was prominently mentioned. You can see the doc on YouTube: It's worth a watch for Hall's opinion of Jeremy Clarkson alone."

Mike replies: I laughed out loud at the comments about Clarkson. And I'd say the rant in the diner also makes the whole thing worth watching. Thanks for the tip; I enjoyed that.

scott kirkpatrick: "Interesting to hear of Neal's anger problems. I thought his angry behavior in the opening scene was the most credible acting in the whole movie. And yes, I stopped believing the forestory during the telephone cord strangling."

B.J.: "I watched the restored version on The Criterion Channel. They have several supplementary pieces that make the film even more meaningful. There is one on the restoration process, another with commentary by a film historian, plus a long film about the director, Edgar Ulmer. I was fascinated to learn that he was one of the Hollywood greats who came out of the artistic world of Weimar Germany. These included Zinneman, Wilder, Wyler, and Siodmak, among others. And, of course, they all knew each other. There is a monthly (or annual) fee to view the Criterion Channel, but they offer a free two week trial period."

Paulo: "Fascinating. I did the 'exercise' of watching the movie as you suggested and eagerly awaited for your post today. This alternate interpretation really takes it from a 'B' movie to an 'A' movie in my mind. First time that happens for me."

Comments

[Phil Stiles]

I watched the film the other night, and your interpretation never occurred to me. Now that you've laid it out, it makes perfect sense and explains some of the improbable events depicted. I shall go forward, now ever alert for unreliable narrators. Thanks for this informative digression.

[Vince]

I'm also a fan of noir, although I had not seen Detour before your "homework assignment." I did the assignment this weekend, though, since I have Amazon Prime.

Although the theory you discuss does appear in Ebert's "Great Movies" review, the theory itself is not Ebert's. From his review, "But the critic Andrew Britton argues a more intriguing theory in Ian Cameron's Book of Film Noir."

It's Mr. Britton who should be given credit for the theory, not Roger.

[Albert Smith]

I was very lucky to have read your pre-announcment of your intention to review this movie. Literally 12 hour later it played on my local cable system, so I got to watch it.

The cost saving measures were obvious to me when they made no attempt to be realistic with the geography. At one point the two men were in the Mohave desert surrounded by Joshua trees (use to live there, recognize it well) hoping to be able to make it to Los Angels in a few days to place his bet... it's like three hours tops depending on where in LA. Also, when he picks up the female hitchhiker, she references Arizona and he Needles... on the way to LA. Those are non intersecting places given the route.

I was surprised how quickly I got pulled in. The beginning of the backstory was depressing. Once he made his decision to head to LA, I was on board. I must be a "people are good" type in my belief system. I never even thought of his narration being a big cover for what really happened to put him in a sympathetic light. The last lines he spoke, to me, sort of made me believe he was a good guy that have two terrible events that he felt he could not explain. Maybe Ebert was right.

Couple of other things:

People were taking nitro pills well into the 1970s, my father had them in his pocket every day, just in case.

The phone: I was screaming at my tv, "just rip out the cord!"

I was quite surprised that no reference to W W 2 was made by anyone in a 1945 movie. There would have still been rationing and surely someone would have been a veteran or had family member overseas.

His original girlfriend was way to much of a homebody for someone that delayed a marriage to seek her fame and fortune 3000 miles away. She was always in that chair holding the phone anytime day or night.

Overall, I'm glad that I put in the time.

A recommendation Mike...

If you really like the film noir style, the Coen Brothers (of Fargo fame) did their homage to the genre with a film called "The man that wasn't there ", a film that was shot by cinematographer Roger Deakins. The story is classic post war noir with great acting by all, but its strength is the photography. When it came out it got a lot of photo web boards talking about how great the B&W was shot. I bought the DVD and watch it often.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

I'm delighted to see you having such fun with one of these noir films! I've been a fan of this genre for a very long time. It's ironic, too. I am a complete devotee of color photography. But I'll bet that at least 75% of my film collection is b&w!

There are actually several films in this genre that feature real, or imagined, sub-plots and subtexts so you might have fun hunting a few more down.

Beyond American shores, one of the finest examples of a film made to feature ambiguity is Akira Kurasawa's 1950 film Rashomon starring Toshiro Mifune. If you can deal with subtitled films it's an absolute classic that also beautifully illustrates how subtle changes in imagery can so dramatically help to deflect a narrative, something skilled photographers deal with daily.

[Jeff]

Roger Ebert didn’t exactly propose the movie’s premise that you support; rather he credits the critic Andrew Britton for his theory presented in Ian Cameron’s Book of Film Noir. Ebert does, however, seem to agree with the premise.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-detour-1945

[David Lee]

“Wouldn't he simply pull the phone cord from the wall to prevent her from calling the police, like you've seen in a thousand other old movies? Why try to pull the phone back from her when he can't get it from under the door anyway?”

I thought exactly the same during the scene, Mike. But the director shows us that the telephone jack was actually in her bedroom. That is why he had to pull the cord instead of just pulling it off the wall.

Very nice reading. I think I agree with both Roger Ebert and you. But it never crossed my mind when I was watching the film.

[hugh crawford]

One of the interesting things at the beginning of the film when they are walking home are the two shots of street signs on Riverside Drive. The first one is 73rd St. & Riverside Drive which in 1945 was the site of the Charles M Schwab house which was the most extravagant home ever built in Manhattan and was probably being demolished at that very moment. At the time it was a rather notorious symbol for reversal of fortune.

From Wikipedia
Schwab was a self-made man who became president of U.S. Steel and later founded Bethlehem Steel Company.

Schwab's former employer Andrew Carnegie, whose own mansion on upper Fifth Avenue later became the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, once remarked, "Have you seen that place of Charlie's? It makes mine look like a shack."

Schwab became notorious for his "fast lane" lifestyle including opulent parties, high-stakes gambling, and a string of extramarital affairs producing at least one child out of wedlock. The affairs and the out-of-wedlock child soured his relationship with his wife. He became an international celebrity when he "broke the bank" at Monte Carlo, and traveled in a $100,000 private rail car named "Loretto".

Schwab lost everything in the stock market crash of 1929 and died destitute ten years later.

He tried to give the house to the city as the mayor’s mansion but was turned down.

Even more interesting stuff here
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_M._Schwab_House
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_M._Schwab

My mother-in-law* lived on Riverside Drive and 77th St., the other corner shown and I recall there being some sort of celebrity sex/murder scandal or the like involving that address but I can’t remember it in any detail. Perhaps someone else knows.

*Manager of the ICP bookstore from its beginnings until the early 90s, so at least that’s photo related I guess.

[Stan B.]

I keep mining the usual resources for film noir as if they still make 'em, anyone know a rich untapped vein- do tell. A time of: dames, gams, mugs, peepers and screws...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtUcPgFSRFg

https://www.miskatonic.org/slang.html

[Matt Kallio]

This is fun.
Britton's interpretation helps explain the main inconsistency that bothered me: why Al immediately assumes he will be blamed for Haskell's death, and then assures it by taking his things. It also helps account for Savage's terrible acting -- an imaginary woman might be so stupidly vicious, but not a real one, I hope.
The backwards car and highway really had me worried too. But I've seen good YouTube discussions about filmmakers' choices between continuity and dramatic effect. Continuity definitely runs second, and this is an example I guess.

[Patrick D Perez]

Albert Smith mentioned Roger Deakins' work on The Man Who Wasn't There. I'd only like to add that the film was shot on color film stock even though monochrome was the intended release format. I have no clue why they wouldn't have used a monochrome film stock.

As an aside, Deakins won an Oscar for his work on Blade Runner 2049 and it was astoundingly good work. He's one of the very best working cinematographers today.

Patrick

[Daniel]

A good Detour is THE BANG BANG CLUB - a movie about South African Photojournalists. Based on reality it gives life to what happened and how they dealt with it.
I tend to prefer reality based movies - the more accurate the better.
Or - go the other direction with Coen Brothers and similar departures from reality.

[Roger]

Check out the web site Miracle Movies https://miraclemovies.wordpress.com/. It's not updated very often--read one of the articles and you'll understand why: It's an understatement to call those articles deep dives about movie making and movie makers.

And nitroglycerin is still used by heart patients. A buddy of mine never leaves home without his little vial.

[Dave Millier]

Hi Mike

This is a very skillfully written post in my opinion. I could detail all the reasons why I think this, but I shall content myself with saying I am impressed with your writing here.

[Crabby Umbo]

I've never seen a more objectionable "broad" in B-films!

[Mike]

I wonder if Martin Goldsmith’s novel, upon which his script is based, sheds any more light on the ‘twisted truth’ theory. It’s subtitled “An Extraordinary Tale” - so perhaps that’s a clue.

[Bruce Hedge]

Well, you sucked me in! Found it on YouTube. Got me from the opening credits, which should have been shot on an Olympus E-M1 Mk 3 with image stabilisation on full... (driving along a beautiful bouncing landscape) .. then an interesting introduction to a genre I'd not encountered before, and will continue to embrace... the side bars of YouTube invite investigation into many similar movies...Beautiful B&W photography, .. Fascinating gift of two hours where I should have been outside chopping up a tree which fell over my boundary fence during a storm a few hours ago.Great comments about the movie from commenters.. expanded my appreciation of a new area of movie making no end! I really was interested in what that car was!--Thanks Mike... rather beautiful. Would be worth a lot today I imagine... More than $1850 !! .

[I read widely about that movie and don't remember where every tidbit came from, but I recall reading somewhere that Haskell's car would be worth $70,000 today and that one sold for as high as $120,000. --Mike]

[David Bridge]

Two other great elements in this film: musical references to Chopin's Fanstaisie Impromptu a.k.a. "I'm always chasing rainbows" and to La Traviata in Vera's (consumptive?) cough and implications she may not live long,
Fascinating!

[Robert Hudyma]

John Huston's 1950 The Asphalt Jungle would make an excellent Double-Bill together with Detour.

This is another classic Film Noir where you sympathize with: criminals, crooked cops and women who are hopelessly in love with bad boys.

[One of my favorite noirs! --Mike]

[Richard Parkin]

I can vouch for nitroglycerin still being current. I was given it as a spray under my tongue (just after reading this post!) for a suspected heart attack — it wasn’t fortunately.