Led to introspect after a life-altering heart attack, Sharad Raj explores the dark brilliance of Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour—a masterpiece of fatalism that redefined noir cinema's boundaries.  

A Morning That Changed Everything

On the morning of June 20, 2015, as I sat sipping my tea at my parents’ house, an excruciating pain began to envelop me. It soon became unbearable, prompting my doctor parents to realize that I was having a heart attack. Life was never the same after that.

When I asked my cardiologist, “Why me, at 49?” he simply replied, “It’s genetic.” That meant I had no control over it—I was fated to face this sooner or later. The best medical care in the country couldn’t undo what had happened. This marked the beginning of my inquiry into the concept of “free will.” 

“I keep trying to forget what happened and wonder what my life might have been like if that car of Haskel’s hadn’t stopped. But one thing I don’t have to wonder about, I know. Someday a car will stop to pick me up that I never thumbed. Yes, Fate or some mysterious force can put the finger on you or me, for no good reason at all.” - Al Roberts in Detour.

Discovering Ulmer's Detour

A couple of years later, I happened to watch Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945), and my jaw dropped. The film’s exhilarating brilliance, achieved with such minuscule resources, was astounding. I wondered who this maker was who could conceive such a film. One particular hotel room sequence is perhaps the greatest in the history of noir films—though I won’t describe it here to avoid spoiling it for first-time viewers.

The Overlooked Genius of Edgar G. Ulmer

It wasn’t just me; even American audiences, production companies, and critics would ask, “Edgar G. who?” That was the usual response when, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and their Cahiers du Cinéma associates cited Edgar G. Ulmer as one of the Hollywood masters who had been cruelly neglected.

Detour: A Journey of Fatalism

Detour follows Al Roberts (Tom Neal), a New York nightclub piano player on a road trip to meet his girlfriend in California, but fate intervenes in the form of deaths and killings. Many consider Detour to be the darkest film in the noir genre because of the cynicism of its protagonist, Al Roberts, its fatalism, and its strong parallels with Albert Camus’s protagonist, Meursault, in The Stranger. Like Al Roberts, Meursault is involved in a freak, inexplicable death. Both are victims of a cruel and inexplicable fate, against which they are entirely powerless. They both meet an unfortunate and inescapable end, which they accept with eerie detachment.

Yet there is nothing existential about Detour; fatalism is just one small part of the giant umbrella of existentialism. But it is this passive reception of fatalism that makes me think Detour is perhaps one of the greatest noirs ever, if not the greatest. The Coen Brothers, too, hold the film in very high esteem and pay homage to it in their debut film, Blood Simple.

The Origins of Darkness in Detour

What is mind-boggling is the film's darkness—where did Ulmer get it from? Born in Austria, Ulmer was the set designer for several German expressionist films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and M. He closely worked with masters like F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, and Robert Wiene. Once Ulmer moved to Hollywood, he worked with greats like Billy Wilder, another filmmaker who gave us great noirs, and William Wyler. Ulmer largely remained a Poverty Row filmmaker but was held in high esteem by peers like Peter Bogdanovich, who once said, “Nobody has ever made good pictures faster or for less money than Edgar Ulmer,” and film critic Michael Wilson, who called Ulmer “the patron saint of all film pirates.”   

Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945) stands as a quintessential film noir, capturing the essence of fate and fatalism. Shot in just three days, Detour showcases the dark brilliance of Ulmer, a filmmaker once overlooked by Hollywood but revered by the French New Wave. With its parallels to Albert Camus’s existential themes in The Stranger, Detour remains a timeless exploration of human helplessness against a cruel fate. Discover why Detour is hailed as one of the greatest noirs ever, earning admiration from filmmakers like the Coen Brothers. Stream this noir classic now and experience its unparalleled depth. 

So, enjoy this brilliant film on YouTube.