B is for Radical Realism, A is for Corny Contradiction

James Naremore confirms that Detour (Ulmer 1945) is a “genuinely cheap production, photographed in only six days, with a two-to-one shooting ratio, seven speaking parts, and a running time of a little over an hour” (144). B-pictures differ from A-pictures both visually and contextually. Among the film noir productions, which had been produced during a time of despair, many of these films that had larger budgets to work with, paradoxically depict upper-middle class characters that are not tremendously distressed (excluding the trouble they bring upon themselves i.e. deception, greed, promiscuity, etc). Men and women alike are often displayed in flashy attire, making sexually implicit comments, and always having an agenda of their own. B-noirs’ low-budget production allows the noir subgenre’s true tone/mood to be captured on screen. Detour is more subversive than the A-noirs, in terms of its themes and tone, as it effectively and effortlessly reflects the realism of the poverty and isolation looming after the depression and the war, ultimately reflecting the true noir tone/mood on-screen in a dramatically different way.

Without the larger budgets of some of the other A-noirs, low-budget B-noirs reflect the economic hardship experienced by the film industry and the production of said films, as well as the mirrored experience reflected within these narratives through the diegetic characters’ own economic states and personal distress. Naremore explains the upside to downsizing, “Ulmer lacked the vast technical resources of Murnau and Hitchcock, but his relative poverty gave him certain advantages. Detour is so far down on the economic and cultural scale of things that it virtually escapes commodification, and it can be viewed as a kind of subversive or vanguard art” (148). The sets are cheap, the story is told primarily through voice-over narration while filming Al, and the only action that does take place after the initial conflict is introduced is on sets are so cramped and static that they are able to depict the characters’ claustrophobia and confinement. For example, the hotel room Al feels trapped in, or when Al and Vera are driving in the car and she begins to interrogate him about the real owner of the car. He’s trapped, and the viewers sense it through the visuals. In contrast, an A-noir such as Double Indemnity relies on the city as a whole to symbolize Walter Neff’s feelings of entrapment and isolation. While Detour accomplishes a similar symbolization via small rooms, a moving car, a drive-in diner, all of which are in a new town Al that is not familiar. By filming Al in these spaces where he feels trapped, the camera frames his face very closely to enhance this feeling of being cramped, confused, and anxious. It was not only the visual style of the film that marks Detour with its B-picture status, the content differs from that which is depicted in A-pictures as well.

Femme Fatales in A-noirs like Laura, Phyllis, Gilda, and Brigid, although fatal, maintain a certain level of femininity, sophistication, and class. Furthermore, because of the code, the sexual encounters, histories, and partners were dealt with accordingly by replacing such scenes with sexual innuendos, the closing of a door, a wink, and/or a kiss followed by a fade-to-black, followed by the adjusting of clothing. The point to be made is that the woman portrayed in Detour, is undoubtedly different than all of the “A” femme fatales, in terms of her disheveled appearance, erratic behaviour, language, attitude, selfishness, the fact that she is hitch-hiking, and her aggressive personality as a whole. “It is impossible to imagine any A-budget picture that would have been allowed to depict her” (Naremore, 149). The code did not regulate the content of B-pictures, and therefore they were able to depict more subversive themes.

In summation, B-noirs differ from A-noirs in two significant ways (in reference to Detour): stylistically and thematically. The style of B-noirs effortlessly reflects real-life despair experienced during the heyday of films noirs, as they had to work with low-budget production. Also, ideologies embedded and reinforced by The Code pay less attention to measly B-pictures, allowing a new kind of woman to make her way to the big screen, tampering with gender norms and shocking audiences. Meanwhile, the big-budget A-noirs contradict the dampened mood of the times as they portray the bourgeois upper class women as they flaunt their expensive furs and speak with detectives who have other things on their minds, with the help of proper lighting, editing, elaborate mise-en-scene and settings, numerous speaking roles, and so on and so forth. This contradiction (between visuals and themes) takes away the tone of despair, desperation, and defeat that Detour effortlessly communicates.