1930's Film Noir

Detour is a film that at this day and age could never be everlasting, but even though many corners were cut to make this movie, and it’s many technical errors, it has endure because it embodies the guilty spirit of the film noir, its creepy and so haunting, hard to forget once it has been seen.

It’s hard to really place a category to the main character, cannot say whether Al Robert is a hero who has bad luck or a villain who enjoys being mistreated by Vera. At first we see him sad because his so-called love, whom he wants to marry has left him, and now he is depressed, so he hitchhikes to California where his love has gone. So far, he is a dopey, sad guy, maybe a hero who is down on his luck. But then Haskell who picks him up on the road, dies of a heart attack after telling Al of a Dame with claws who attacked him. Al then acts very much like a villain and buries Haskell, he says that the police would count him guilty, he almost sounds like he is guilty. Even though we saw Haskell die from a heart attack, Al sees himself guilty, he even dreams about doing exactly what he just did! Why? Not only he just buries him, but he assumes his identity, and then picks up a strange and angry hitchhiker, who turns out to be the same angry woman Haskell has picked up, all in all very fishy.

When Vera proposes to steal the money Haskell would have inherited, he falls right for it, there is not even a good reason for him to do it, he isn’t tricked into it, he is fully aware that what he will be doing is wrong, yet he goes along with it. He stays around for Vera’s bullying as though he enjoys it and just refused to take charge and leave. You can’t help but to feel sorry for him, but still not understand why he can’t just do right… He then gets stuck with another death, that he didn’t cause, but yet he just takes it onto his back and keeps on falling even further down the hole he has been digging.  

Maybe he is a hero who has been dealt a bad hand by life, but maybe he is a bad guy who is telling us, his version of the events, maybe we are being told his alibi, he is trying to show us, that he is not really bad.