Detour (1945)

Описание: Al Roberts (Tom Neal), a weary hitchhiker, drifts into a Reno diner and broods over coffee as a jukebox tune pulls him back to his former life in New York. Once a gifted pianist, he had grown bitter playing in a shabby nightclub after his girlfriend Sue Harvey (Claudia Drake), the club’s singer, left for Hollywood. Lonely and frustrated, Al finally decided to follow her to California by hitchhiking, convinced they could marry and start fresh despite his lack of money.

On a desolate Arizona road, Al was picked up by Charles Haskell, Jr. (Edmund MacDonald), a chatty bookie. Haskell, prone to popping pills, soon fell asleep while Al took the wheel. When a sudden rainstorm forced Al to stop and raise the convertible top, he tried to shake Haskell awake. Instead, the man slumped out of the car, struck a rock, and died. Terrified that no one would believe the accident, Al hid the body, took Haskell’s wallet, keys, and clothes, and continued toward Los Angeles under the dead man’s name, planning to abandon the car before anyone noticed.

Near Desert Center, Al made the fatal mistake of picking up Vera (Ann Savage), a hard-edged drifter whose silence suddenly gave way to fury as she recognized the car and confronted Al. She revealed that Haskell had once picked her up in Louisiana and that she escaped after he made unwanted advances. Certain Al had killed him, she seized the chance to blackmail him, demanding the cash from Haskell’s wallet and insisting they work together to sell the car.

In Hollywood, the pair posed as Mr. and Mrs. Haskell while renting a small apartment. Al simmered with resentment, but Vera delighted in controlling him. Their plan to sell the car collapsed when a newspaper item announced that Haskell’s wealthy father was dying and that his estranged son was being sought. Realizing Al could impersonate Haskell and claim an inheritance, Vera pushed him to take the risk, but Al refused, knowing he could never mimic the real man’s history.

Their tension exploded when Vera drank heavily and threatened to call the police. She locked herself in the bedroom with the phone, wrapping the cord around her in her drunken flailing. Desperate to stop her, Al yanked the cord from outside the door, only to break in moments later and find her strangled. Knowing Sue was now forever beyond reach, Al fled back to the highway. In the present-day diner, he sits lost in thought, certain that fate will eventually lead the police to him, no matter where he wanders.

A 1945 American Black & White film noir crime film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, produced by Leon Fromkess, screenplay by Martin Goldsmith, based on Goldsmith's novel "Detour: An Extraordinary Tale" (1939), cinematography by Benjamin H. Kline, starring Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald, Tim Ryan, Esther Howard, Pat Gleason, Roger Clark, Don Brodie, Eddie Hall, and Harry Strang. Released by the Producers Releasing Corporation.

Ann Savage and Tom Neal made three movies together at Columbia Pictures before this film. PRC teamed them again for "Detour" to exploit the publicity and press buildup they had been given in 1943 and 1944.

Leo Erdody scored the original musical soundtrack. Erdody's hands appear in closeups as Al Roberts plays the piano.

The car in which Al gets a lift at the start of the film is a 1940-ish Packard convertible: a Six 110 or 120, or a Super Eight One-Sixty or One-Eighty.

The car owned by the character Charlie Haskell and later driven by Al Roberts is a customized 1941 Lincoln Continental V-12 convertible, a base model of a "Cabriolet" but one that features bolted-on rear fender skirts and some exterior components added later from Lincoln's limited 1942 version of the same model. The production budget for Detour was so tight that director Ulmer decided to use this car, his "personal car", for the cross-country crime drama.

Al's arrest at the end was not in the script, but censor Joseph Breen at theMotion Picture Production Code Administration did not permit murderers to get away with their crimes, so Ulmer satisfied the censors by having Al picked up by a police car at the very end of the film after foreseeing his arrest in the earlier narration

Producers Releasing Corporation was one of the so-called Poverty Row film studios in mid-20th-century Hollywood.

In 1992, Detour was the first "B" movie selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

This film is included on Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list.

Errol Morris' favorite film. He said of it: "It has an unparalleled quality of despair, totally unrelieved by hope."

This film is considered to be a major example of film noir, and defines the genre, with shadowy black and white cinematography, a star-crossed protagonist,, a femme fatale, cynical voice-over narration; and ambiguous morality. This is a is a standout noir.