Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Detour
- Detour is a 1945 film
noir thriller.
- The 68-minute film was released by the
Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC),
one of the so-called "poverty row" film
studios in mid-twentieth century
Hollywood.
- Detour had a small budget, of $20,000 to $100,000, with bare
sets and straightforward camera work, but it still got a lot of
praise over the years.
- The film was adapted by Martin Goldsmith
from Goldsmith's novel of the same name.
- This is a good movie to show the Femme
Fatale manipulating the protagonist into
doing something for her and leading him
into a downward spiral.
- Although the Femme Fatale seems very blunt and
bitter, she still tries to seduce him into doing what
she wants, which seems to work.
- Detour starts with a man in a bar, a setting typical of a
film noir, who then has a flashback to what has
happened in the past, which is another convention of
film noir.
- The plot also involves two deaths that lead Al into more trouble
then he started off in; which is all because of the Femme Fatale.
After this Al soon realises that it is a situation that he now
cannot get out of.
- When Al kills the Femme Fatale, there is a shot where
you can see her lying on the bed, dead, through the
mirror. This is a camera shot that appears a lot
throughout film noirs.
- The settings used in the film are typical settings that you
would find in a film noir. These include; an urban towns, bars and
apartments.
- The plot involves someone picking up Al while
he is driving across America. The man suddenly dies
while in his car, so Al decides to dump the body and
continue. Al then picks up the Femme Fatale, who
has a connection with the hitch hiker who has died.
Al then kills the Femme Fatale by mistake and soon
realises that he will soon be caught out.
- The film uses Chiaroscuro lighting, which creates shadows around the room and increases the atmosphere. This
especially happens when the Femme Fatale threatens to call the police when she gets drunk in the apartment, as
this is a tense scene anyway and the Chiaroscuro lighting helped to increase the atmosphere further.
- It is in this scene that we see how much
power Vera has over Al, because he feels
threatened by her. It shows that she has
got the upper hand over him because she
can phone the police and get him arrested.
- The audience can tell nearer to Vera's death that Al is beginning to fall for her.
This shows that Vera's power of seduction has worked and that he is willing to
do a lot for her. However, when she dies, we see how Al really feels about her
because he is deeply upset about it all.
- In the beginning the audience see how isolated and alone Al is, which is common in film
noirs for the main male character to be alone and isolated from everyone else.
- The Hollywood Production Code did not allow
murderers to get away with their crimes, so Ulmer
got through the censors by having Al picked up by a
police car at the very end of the movie, after
foreseeing his arrest in the earlier narration.
- The final picture was tightly cut down from
a much longer shooting script, which had
been shot with more extended dialogue
sequences than appear in the final film.
- The soundtrack is fully realized, with ambient
backgrounds, motivated sound effects, and a
carefully scored original musical soundtrack by
Leo Erdody.