Detour (BFI Film Classics)

ISBN: 1844572390

Author: Isenberg, Noah

Condition: Used

Long considered an unpolished gem of film noir, the private treasure of filmbuffs, cinephiles and critics, Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour (1945) has recently earneda new wave of recognition. In the words of film critic David Thomson, it issimply 'beyond remarkable.' The only B-picture to make it into the NationalFilm Registry of the Library of Congress, Detour has outrun its fate as thebastard child of one of Hollywood's lowliest studios. Ulmer's film follows, inflashback, the journey of Al Roberts (Tom Neal), a pianist hitching from NewYork to California to join his girlfriend Sue (Claudia Drake), a singer gone toseek her fortune in Hollywood. In classic noir style, Detour features mysteriousdeaths, changes of identity, an unforgettable femme fatale called Vera (AnnSavage), and, in Roberts, a wretched, masochistic antihero.Noah Isenberg's study of Detour draws on a vast array of archival sources,unpublished letters and interviews, to provide an animated and thoroughaccount of the film's production history, its critical reception, its afterlife(including various remakes) and the different ways in which the film has beenunderstood since its release. He devotes significant attention to each of the keyplayers in the film - the crew as well as the principal actors - while chartingthe uneasy transformation of Martin Goldsmith's pulp novel into Ulmer'ssignature film, the disagreements between the director and writer, and thesevere financial and formal limitations with which Ulmer grappled. The storythat Isenberg tells, rich in historical and critical insight, replicates the brisknessof a B-movie.