Détour/Detour (Original version in English with French subtitles, VO avec sous-titres en français)

Français: Détour (titre original : Detour) est un film américain réalisé par Edgar George Ulmer, sorti en 1945. Originellement simple film de série B à petit budget tourné rapidement, d’une longueur de seulement 68 minutes, Détour suscite les louanges depuis les années 1970 et est aujourd’hui tenu en haute estime. Synopsis Un pianiste de bar, Al Roberts, part en stop rejoindre sa fiancée en Californie. Sur la route, un inconnu en décapotable (Haskell) le prend. Ayant pris le volant, Al s’arrête pour remettre la capote sous la pluie et découvre que le propriétaire de la voiture est mort dans son sommeil. Paniqué, il jette le corps et reprend vite la route. En s’arrêtant à une station service, il fait signe à une auto-stoppeuse qu’il veut bien la prendre. Il s’agit de Vera, une femme fatale, qui reconnait la voiture d’Haskell et menace de le dénoncer pour le meurtre présumé, à moins qu’il n’assume l’identité du mort pour toucher un héritage. Les deux protagonistes se disputent violemment dans un hôtel jusqu’à ce que Roberts l’étrangle. Distribution Tom Neal : Al Roberts Ann Savage : Vera Claudia Drake : Sue Harvey Edmund MacDonald : Charles Haskell Jr English: Detour is a 1945 American independent film noir directed by Edgar G. Ulmer starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage. The film today is in the public domain and freely available for viewing at various online sources. In 1992, Detour was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant“. Plot: Al Roberts, an unemployed piano player, hitches a ride, arriving at a roadside diner in Reno, Nevada. Another customer in the diner plays a song on the jukebox, that disturbs Al, for it reminds him of his former life in New York City. Al recalls a time there when he was bitter about squandering his musical talent playing in a cheap nightclub. After his girlfriend Sue Harvey, the nightclub’s lead singer, quits her job and leaves New York to seek fame in Hollywood, Al becomes depressed. After anguishing a while, Al decides to travel to California to marry Sue. With little money to his name, Al is forced to hitchhike across the country. In Arizona, bookie Charles Haskell Jr. gives Al a ride in his convertible and tells him that he is in luck; for he is driving to Los Angeles to place a bet on a horse. During the drive, he has Al pass him his pills on several occasions, which he swallows as he drives. That night, Al drives while Haskell sleeps. When a rainstorm forces Al to pull over to put up the convertible’s top, he is unable to rouse Haskell. Al opens the passenger-side door and Haskell tumbles out, falling to the ground and striking his head on a rock. Al realizes the bookie is dead. It is likely that Haskell died earlier from a heart attack, but Al is certain that if he calls the police, they will arrest him for killing Haskell, so Al hides the body in the brush. He takes the dead man’s money, clothes, and identification, and drives away, intent on abandoning the car near Los Angeles. Al crosses into California and spends a night in a motel. The next day, as he leaves a gas station near Desert Center Airport, he picks up a hitchhiker, who gives her name as Vera. At first, she travels silently with Al, who has identified himself as Haskell, but suddenly challenges his identity and ownership of the car, revealing that she had been picked up by Haskell earlier in Louisiana, but got out in Arizona after he tried to force himself on her. Al tells her how Haskell died, but she blackmails him by threatening to turn him over to the police. She takes the cash that Al retrieved from Haskell’s wallet and demands whatever money they get by selling the car. In Hollywood, they rent an apartment, posing as Mr. and Mrs. Haskell, to provide an address when they sell the car. When they are about to make the sale, Vera learns from a local newspaper that Haskell’s wealthy father is near death and a search is under way for his long-estranged son. Vera demands that Al impersonate Haskell and position himself to inherit the estate. Al refuses, arguing that the impersonation would require detailed knowledge he lacks. Back at the apartment, Vera gets drunk and they begin arguing intensely. In a drunken rage, she threatens to call the police and runs into the bedroom with the telephone. She locks the door then falls on the bed and begins to fall asleep, the telephone cord tangled around her neck. From the other side of the door, Al pulls on the cord to try to disconnect the phone. When he breaks down the door, he discovers he has inadvertently strangled Vera.