Movie Review - Detour

Detour - (1945) - Piano play Al Roberts decides to follow his singer girlfriend to Hollywood.  With virtually empty pockets he hitchhikes across the country from New York City.  Along the way he meets a bookie and a dangerous young woman named Vera (Ann Savage).  Between the two of them they will destroy Al Roberts life.

Here's film noir stripped down to its bare essence.  It's dark and cynical with a strong sexual undertone.  People die mysteriously and there's money to be made.  Al Roberts will be offered several choices and he'll muff all of them.  Vera thinks she's got the world on a string and all she has to do is pull.  When the string does get pulled she won't like the outcome.  Sadly the meddling of the Hollywood Production Code of the day doesn't let this movie end the way it should have ended.  The sets are cheap, the acting is spotty and periodically the movie flips (literally.  After shooting several scenes during the hitchhiking section they realized that all the travel was moving left to right on the screen.  By tradition westward movement is done right to left.  With only a limited budget they just flipped the negative.  So periodically cars suddenly have right hand drive steering wheels!).  Yet somehow this movie works.  The actors had little to no experience but there's a chemistry between them and the dialogue that works.  Vera is the dangerous but attractive woman, Al is the weak man.  In just 68 minutes the movie managed to become a classic.

I had never heard of "Detour" before reading Roger Ebert's "The Great Movies".  The legend is that the movie was made for $20,000 in 6 days (later scholarship says probably $100,000 in about a month but still a cheap, fast movie).  It comes at the very dawn of the film noir age in the United States.  You could spend a week noting all the things that could have been done better but why not take a little time and enjoy all that it does well?

Rating - **** Recommended