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Ulmer

• Edgar Georg Ulmer (1904-1972):
  • Jewish director from the Czech Republic, which was under Austria at that time
  • He worked in Europe as assistant to several famous directors, including F. W. Murnau, who directed Nosferatu (1922), The Last Laugh (1924), then moved to Hollywood and died at 42 after a car accident (1931)
  • Ulmer had a big hit with the psychological horror movie The Black Cat (1934), starring iconic actors Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi
  • He had an affair with the wife of the nephew of Universal’s chief, married her, and was blackballed by the big studios as a result
    • Tom Neal, a former boxer, was also blacklisted for personal reasons, left acting and worked as a gardener; later, in 1965, he went to jail for six years for manslaughter

Ulmer: links

• Edgar G. Ulmer (Wikipedia)
• Edgar G. Ulmer (Britannica)
• Edgar G. Ulmer, by Bill Krohn, from the July-August 1983 Issue of Film Comment
• Detour (1945 film) (Wikipedia)

Detour

• The screenplay was written by Martin Goldsmith (1913-1994), based on his 1939 novel with the same title
• A Poverty Row production
  • Ulmer, the “King of Poverty Row”
  • “Detour” was shot in six (14?) days for $88,000 (“It Happened One night” had cost $325,000 in 1934)
  • Low budget, low quality?
    • thrifty sets: fog, dark interiors, curtains behind the band, to create the nightclub’s interior
    • recycling frames (the nightmare after Haskell has died)
      • limited film supply, with ratio of 2 to 1
    • small continuity issues
• Produced by PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation)

B-movie, film noir