Film Forum

(1945, Edgar G. Ulmer) “Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you.” New York to L.A. hitchhiker Tom Neal’s pickup of the aptly-named Ann Savage leads to blackmail and death. Produced by bottom-of-the-barrel studio PRC, Detour was ignored when first released and didn’t even rate a New York Times review until 1992, when Vincent Canby called it “one of the defining films of the seductive genre called Film Noir.” DCP restoration. Approx. 68 min.

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, with funding from the George Lucas Family Foundation.

A JANUS FILMS RELEASE

Reviews

"The essence of low-budget filmmaking and a landmark of film noir.”
– Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times

“One of the most daring and thoroughly perverse works of art ever to come out of Hollywood.”
– Dave Kehr

“One of the defining films of the seductive genre called Film Noir.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“Ulmer provided one of the links between German Expressionism, with its exaggerated lighting, camera angles and dramaturgy, and American Film Noir… An example of material finding the appropriate form. Two bottom-feeders from the swamps of pulp swim through the murk of low-budget Noir and are caught gasping in Ulmer's net. They deserve one another.”
– Roger Ebert

“Possibly the bleakest, most doom-laden Film Noir ever… Ann Savage's sensational performance, combined with the real-life trajectory of Neal, who ended up going to prison for murdering his wife, have made this a tormented film with the despairing logic of nightmare.”
– Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times

“The bleakest and most complete expression of the doomed world through which Ulmer’s characters move, deprived of any semblance of free will... Ann Savage gives a portrayal of a femme fatale that is breathtaking in its sheer repellence.”
– Philip Kemp, World Film Directors

“May be one of the great unrecognized works of the absurdist style, rivaling even Kafka in its determination to strip life of logic and stability.”
– David Rodowick