Detour

Detour

Detour is a 1945 film noir thriller.
1. 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.
  1. 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.
1. 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.
1. 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.
1. 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.
1. The soundtrack is fully realized, with ambient backgrounds, motivated sound effects, and a carefully scored original musical soundtrack by Leo Erdody.

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	Created by Georgiaa17 over 9 years ago