Edgar G. Ulmer
Detour

Life is a chance whose manifestations seem to possess an iron logic that many call fate. This is what seems to happen to the protagonist of this legendary film by Czech director Edgar G. Ulmer, considered the greatest B-Movie auteur ever. Coming from German expressionist experiences, Ulmer worked for one of the most miserable American film production companies, after receiving the resignation of the head of Universal (Cal Laemmle) for having united with the wife of the nephew, who left him for the director.

"The black cat" remains his only "rich" and highly successful production: the rest of his works were produced on a very tight budget for PRC and forgotten for decades.

Among all these, "Detour" from 1945 remains immortal, an extraordinary parable about the absurdity of living and the illogical logic of chance/fate, outlined with noir hues but actually a philosophical existentialist tale.

Nihilistic and despairing, "Detour" opens in a small diner where the protagonist, Al Roberts, just out of a car where he had hitchhiked, at the sound of a jukebox playing "I can't believe that you're in love with me" begins to lose it. Calmed by the reproaches of the diner manager, he begins the tale of his infernal journey in flashback. A pianist in a small night spot, with the singer as his girlfriend (the story opens with the singer performing the mentioned standard, together with her boyfriend's orchestra), he is an ordinary man with a normal life and a relationship like many others but unsatisfied. Neither too in love nor too ambitious, but life seems to suit him just fine.

One day his girlfriend decides to try her luck in Hollywood; despite Al's attempts to dissuade her, she has made up her mind. One day Al packs his bag and plans to reach his woman; the few coins in his pocket compel him to hitch rides. After a long wait, he is picked up by a man, Charles Heskell, a strange man by trade a bookmaker. During the journey, Charles shows some injuries to his hand and arm. The scratches on the hand were received from a girl he had picked up along the way and it's implied she reacted to his advances. The cut on his arm is a wound the young man received from his father during a playful fencing duel. Charles had accidentally put out one of his father's eyes, who instinctively slashed him.

Since then, Charles hadn't seen his parent because, panicking, he had run away from home. The use of some pills during the journey suggests that Heskell is a heart patient. During a change at the wheel, Al, asking for help to raise the car's roof due to the pouring rain, discovers that the man isn't sleeping but is dead. He stops the car; Charles falls out of the door and hits his head on a stone that, "fatefully" was right where his head was, sealing Heskell's definite departure. Al is in panic; he imagines that the police would never believe the extraordinary coincidences of the event and disposes of Heskell, assuming his clothes and identity. The following morning, stopping at a gas station, he sees a woman looking for a ride. He offers her a spot in the car. Al seems attracted by the natural beauty of this hitchhiker; at one point, the woman starts and recognizes the car. She was the girl who had scratched Heskell!!!...

The most genius element of "Detour" is precisely the implausibility of the coincidences. Thanks to these extreme contrivances, Ulmer's moral tale can progress on a parallel level to that of reality. Al is a man without qualities plunged into a deadly game that one doesn't know if he deserves or seeks. Clearly in love with the devilish hitchhiker, throughout the film, he denies this attraction and her advances (the carnal union would be an evident seal to the criminal pact even though Al would like it), in favor of common sense that perhaps hides cowardice. The girl (bad, tipsy but intelligent and sincere) in some way confronts him with himself, but Al refuses this confrontation. Memorable is the scene in which, secretly from the woman, forcibly confined to a hotel with her blackmailing and at the same time electing him as a partner in crime, he calls his girlfriend but when she answers the call, he gives up talking to her. The close-up of his face expresses resignation but perhaps also complicity with his destiny, so abruptly "diverted."

Ulmer uses the very scarce means available to create a tense and hallucinatory tale, crazy and implausible yet clear as reality. At the end (in a dreamlike sequence that sees his arrest), Al sums it up and realizes that perhaps the detour his little life has taken, lasting only a few days, has all the appearance of fate.

The film, which after its release disappeared like almost all the films of the bizarre director, is today considered the "B-movie" most perfect and beautiful ever made. There is something of "Detour" in many films that came after ("After Hours" by Scorsese, "U-Turn" by Stone, "The Man Who Wasn't There" by Joel Coen). But none reach the crystalline despair towards the saying "Everyone is the architect of their own fate". Paradoxically, even without having committed any crime (the death of the terrible hitchhiker is to be preserved in the annals of the most beautiful scenes of all time) Al is guilty of everything. Crime: indolence.