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Detour (1945 film)
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==Reception and legacy== [[File:Detour (1945) by Edgar G. Ulmer, trailer.webm|thumb|Trailer of ''Detour''; runtime: 1:32 mins]] ''Detour'' was generally well received on its initial release, with positive reviews in the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', ''[[The Hollywood Reporter]]'', ''[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]'', and other major newspapers and [[trade publications]]. Contemporary screenings of ''Detour'' were also not confined to [[grindhouse]] theaters; they were presented at top "movie houses". For example, in downtown Los Angeles in May 1946, it played at the 2,200-seat [[Orpheum Theatre (Los Angeles)|Orpheum]] in combination with a live stage show featuring the hit [[Slim Gaillard]] Trio and the [[Buddy Rich]] Orchestra. Business was reported to be excellent despite a transit strike.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3xkEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT53 |newspaper=The Billboard|title=Orpheum, Los Angeles (Tuesday afternoon, May 14)|date= May 25, 1946|pages= 54, 56}}</ref> Shortly after the film's release in November 1945, Mandel Herbstman, the reviewer for the trade journal ''[[Motion Picture Herald]]'', rated the production as only "fair". Herbstman was impressed, however, with the film's overall structure. "Venturing far from the familiar melodramatic pattern", he wrote, "director Edgar G. Ulmer has turned out an adroit, albeit unpretentious production about a man who stumbles into a series of circumstances which seals his doom."<ref name="MPH45">{{Cite news|last=Herbstman|first=Mandel|date=November–December 1945|title=Product Digest|work=Motion Picture Herald|url=https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/motionpictureher161unse_0193|access-date=5 October 2024}}</ref> He especially liked its conclusion and noted, "Making no compromise with the 'happy ending' formula, the film has a number of ironic and suspenseful moments."<ref name="MPH45"/> The film was released to television in the early 1950s, and it was broadcast in syndicated TV markets until the advent of mass cable systems. TV reviewers casually recommended it in the 1960s and 1970s as a worthwhile "B" movie. Then, by the 1980s, critics began citing ''Detour'' increasingly as a prime example of ''film noir'', and revival houses, universities and film festivals began presenting the crime drama in tributes to Edgar G. Ulmer and his work. The director died in 1972, unfortunately before the full revival of ''Detour'' and the critical re-evaluation of his career occurred. Tom Neal died the same year as Ulmer, but Ann Savage lived long enough to experience the newfound acclaim. From 1985 until just two years before her death in 2008, she made a series of live appearances at public screenings of the film.{{citation needed|date=August 2023}} Critical response to the film decades after its release is almost universally positive.<ref>{{cite news |last=Johnson |first=Gabe |date=31 October 2011 |title=Critics' Picks: 'Detour' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/video/movies/100000001145268/detour.html |work=The New York Times }}</ref> More current reviewers contrast the technical shoddiness of the film with its successful atmospherics as film critic [[Roger Ebert]] wrote in his essay for ''The Great Movies'', "This movie from Hollywood's [[Poverty Row|poverty row]], shot in six days, filled with technical errors and ham-handed narrative, starring a man who can only pout and a woman who can only sneer, should have faded from sight soon after it was released in 1945. And yet it lives on, haunting and creepy, an embodiment of the guilty soul of film noir. No one who has seen it has easily forgotten it."<ref name="ebert">{{cite news|url=http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19980607/REVIEWS08/401010312/1023|title=Great Movies: Detour|access-date=December 11, 2007|newspaper=Chicago Sun Times|last=Ebert|first=Roger|author-link=Roger Ebert|date=June 7, 1998|archive-date=December 12, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071212095036/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19980607%2FREVIEWS08%2F401010312%2F1023|url-status=dead}}</ref> ''[[Sight and Sound]]'' reviewer Philip Kemp later wrote, "Using unknown actors and filming with no more than three minimal sets, a sole exterior (a used-car lot) to represent Los Angeles, a few stock shots and some shaky back-projection, Ulmer conjures up a black, paranoid vision, totally untainted by glamour, of shabby characters trapped in a spiral of irrational guilt."<ref name="worldfilmdirectors">{{cite book|last=Kemp|first=Philip|editor=Wakeman, John|title=Word Film Directors, Volume 1: 1890–1945|year=1987|publisher=H. W. Wilson|location=New York|isbn=0-8242-0757-2|pages=[https://archive.org/details/worldfilmdirecto0000unse/page/1110 1110]|url=https://archive.org/details/worldfilmdirecto0000unse/page/1110}}</ref> Novelists [[Ed Gorman (writer)|Edward Gorman]] and [[Dow Mossman]] wrote, "''Detour'' remains a masterpiece of its kind. There have been hundreds of better movies, but none with the feel for doom portrayed by ... Ulmer. The random universe [[Stephen Crane]] warned us about—the berserk cosmic impulse that causes earthquakes and famine and [[AIDS]]—is nowhere better depicted than in the scene where Tom Neal stands by the roadside, soaking in the midnight rain, feeling for the first time the noose drawing tighter and tighter around his neck."<ref name="devil">{{cite book|last=Gorman|first=Edward|author-link=Edward Gorman|author2=Mossman, Dow |author-link2=Dow Mossman|editor= Gifford, Barry|title=The Devil Thumbs a Ride & Other Unforgettable Films|chapter=Introduction|year=1988|publisher=Grove Press|isbn=0-8021-3078-X|location=New York|pages=2}}</ref> In 2007, [[Richard Corliss]], the former editor-in-chief of ''[[Film Comment]]'' and a notable film critic for ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine, ranked Savage's portrayal of Vera number 6 on his list of the "Top 25 Greatest Villains" in cinema history, placing her just behind [[Barbara Stanwyck]]'s character [[Phyllis Dietrichson]] in ''[[Double Indemnity]]'' (1944).<ref name="Corliss">{{cite web |url=https://entertainment.time.com/2007/04/26/top-25-greatest-villains/slide/ann-savage-as-vera/ |title=Top 25 Greatest Villains |last=Corliss |first=Richard |date=2007-04-25 |publisher=[[Time_(magazine)|Time]] |access-date=2024-11-17 }}</ref> As part of his assessment of Vera, Corliss describes her effects on not only her traveling companion Al Roberts but on viewers of the film as well: {{Blockquote|... Hell truly is other people—if the person is Vera. Picked up on a trip out west by a man (Tom Neal) fleeing from a death scene, she instantly and spectacularly gets on his and the audience's nerves. When she's not playing the domestic [[wikt:Special:Search/harridan|harridan]] ("Stop makin’ noises like a husband"), she's threatening to send him to the gas chamber ("sniffin' that perfume Arizona hands out free to murderers"). With a final fatal phone call, Vera leads her poor prey to his motel-room doom. Even in death, she makes the survivor the sucker.<ref name="Corliss"/>}}
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