Product: Detour [VHS] (1945)
Rating: 4.0
Wartime Noir
This film captures post-WWII angst better than almost anything I've seen made before or since.Al Roberts (played to perfection by Tom Neal) is a pretty depressing character. We meet him in a diner, filled with pretty cheerful people, which Al brings down considerably by morosely staring into his coffee cup. He almost gets into a fistfight with a trucker because of what the trucker plays on the juke box, and the story begins...The whole movie is a flashback from that diner stool. Al is a brilliant pianist playing in small clubs. [How he got out of the draft is never explained...] His girlfriend sings with him in New York. After a long, long walk/talk, she splits up with him to pursue fame out west. Weeks later he calls and they agree to get back together. He'll come out west and they can be married. But Al must hitchhike, since he is short on cash.Hitchhiking was very common in the Depression, nothing like what it is today. But one of Al's drivers comments on the fact that, even in 1945, it was becoming more and more dangerous...This movie was made cheaply and quickly, and it shows. There are no "names" involved in it at all.In a way, though, that's what makes this movie such a little gem. Noir was never supposed to be glamorous or upscale, and that's definitely the case here.You'll enjoy it, but set your sights appropriately...