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| Detour (1945) / Edgar G. Ulmer |
Both of Ulmer’s two well-known films feature a detour that is of
enormous consequence within the events of the narrative – in essence, both Black Cat and Detour exist as ‘what if’ situations, i.e., the fundamental truth
of their being coerces the audience to posit an alternative narrative
permutation as hypothesis. But there is a catch: in Black Cat, the accident of the vehicle at night that forces the
tourists to stray from their original path and deposit themselves as guests at
the house of Hjalmar Poelzig is merely a geographical diversion; naive young
American lovers unwittingly drift off into unknown, sinister alien territory.
The film is bathed in similar tourist-paranoia; the Eastern-Europeans are creeps,
played by actors who most famously embody (in other films) two of the most notorious pop-culture villains and their accents are their chainsaws. Even so, it isn’t as
moralising as the backpacker-horror films of American 70s or those of the
Australian 00s – it is still sympathetic towards its protagonists and doesn't
punish them for straying off the normal
or the tread path (horror for all its
transgressions is a conservative genre; comedy for all its assurances, a
radical one).
It is the other film which exists as a great moral thesis - an
unreliable narrator and a loser pianist Al Roberts intimates to us the details of his
journey from New York to Hollywood to marry his dull girlfriend, aspiring
actress Sue. On the way, he says, everything that can go wrong, does. A man
gives him a lift and later, dies in the car itself. He decides to take off with
the car, having assumed the identity of the dead man and with the intention of
disposing off the car once he makes it to Hollywood, but on the way, he meets
Vera, a woman who happens to see through his masquerade and threatens to blow
his cover unless he becomes her accomplice in crime. Later in their hotel room, he causes the murder of Vera too - by accident, he insists. Ofcourse, you
could take a lot of this on face-value as a viewer and believe Roberts’ version,
but if one were to put it under scrutiny, it reveals very willing participation
in all the scandal that he comes across. Firstly, with his passenger dead, it
doesn’t even occur to him to perhaps locate a hospital; instead, he disposes
his body off like a real pro and takes off merrily with the money and the car.
Then, he offers a pick Vera up at the petrol station (why, you charmer!) – even
later, when he discovers the black heart that beats inside the woman, he
decides to go along for the ride, like a willing accomplice, never using force
or coercion or blackmail or simple wits to get out of the situation. Instead,
he submits to her – theirs is a keen
psycho-sexual relationship, that of a dominatrix indulging her client;
after all, both of them are role-playing too. In that, he only pretends to be a
victim of fate (‘no matter which way you run, fate will find a way to trip you’,
goes one of his thousand laments, he is a pretty whiny jerk) but actually, he
brings it upon himself.
The operative question here, therefore, could be as to what the
titular 'detour' indicates. It is
certainly not a geographical one, considering he moves rather steadily and
singularly towards Hollywood. It is also not a detour from his original plans,
because he adapts them as he goes along - he is in it for the ride, an extended
bachelor party before he becomes a routine American. Thus, it is a detour from
conventional morality – a diversion from traditional notions of faithfulness
and loyalty, of a rejection of avarice and care for the fellow man – Al Roberts
is a cheater, a deserter and a conman, even if he’d rather pretend otherwise.
The period of the film’s production also ensures that he is punished for this
detour – if it were the 70s, Al and Vera would have escaped with the money to
Mexico.
