Less than the sum of its parts.

[uvula_fr_b4]

Finally saw Detour (1945), a short (68 mins.), much-celebrated film noir directed by Edgar Ulmer about a dim (dim, I tell you!) would-be concert pianist who, after exercising some very poor judgment when a shady good Samaritan perishes after helping him, falls into the clutches of an abrasive (and, apparently, alcoholic) femme fatale

Comments

[marlowe1]

Detour is cool but it's not that great. I have a feeling that it might have done a lot of these things first like the whole gallows ending and the constant shot of the girlfriend singing happy songs to contrast with him fighting with that one woman.

I remember hating The Man Who Wasn't There becuase it was pretty much the Coen Brothers trying to do that kind of movie in all of its cliches (ironic considering that the Coens have done some pretty intense noir movies without falling back on imitating the old ones)

[uvula_fr_b4]

I seem to be in the minority on Coen-love: I liked The Man Who Wasn't There (although, yeah, it was a pastiche / homage; but so was their first one, Blood Simple) and Intolerable Cruelty (I was the only one in the theatre laughing); I hated Burn After Reading; and I love, love, love Miller's Crossing (more than Goodfellas, which was released just 2 days prior to MC, actually). The Big Lebowski was just okay.

The ending of Detour was ridiculous: a cop car pulls up as he's walking down that lonesome highway, the cop riding shotgun gets out but doesn't bother drawing his sidearm, and the sap gets in the back like he's climbing into a taxi.

Sorry, Detour just didn't give me the sense that I was watching something that has been endlessly ripped off (the way that, say, Diabolique and Don't Look Now do). I wasn't impressed with Ann Savage either; Peggy Cummins was more impressive in Gun Crazy. For that matter, so was Jane Greer in Out of the Past.