Detour
Detour • 1h 9m
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer • 1945 • United States
Starring Tom Neal, Ann Savage
From Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist (Tom Neal) finds himself with a dead body on his hands and nowhere to run—a waking nightmare that goes from bad to worse when he picks up the most vicious femme fatale in cinema history, Ann Savage’s snarling, monstrously conniving drifter Vera. Working with no-name stars on a bargain-basement budget, B auteur Edgar G. Ulmer turned threadbare production values and seedy, low-rent atmosphere into indelible pulp poetry. Long unavailable in a format in which its hard-boiled beauty could be fully appreciated, DETOUR haunts anew in its first major restoration.
Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation in collaboration with the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Cinémathèque Française. Restoration funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.
Up Next in Detour
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Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen
This 2004 documentary explores the life and career of director Edgar G. Ulmer and includes interviews with his daughter Arianné Ulmer Cipes; filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich, Roger Corman, Joe Dante, John Landis, and Wim Wenders; and actor Ann Savage.
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Noah Isenberg on DETOUR
The following interview with Noah Isenberg, author of the British Film Institute’s monograph on DETOUR and “Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker in the Margins,” was recorded in New York in November 2018.
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Restoring DETOUR
This 2018 program details the challenges that the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, in collaboration with the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Cinémathèque française faced in the restoration of DETOUR.
