Americans get a bum rap when it comes to making beautiful things. I think it was H.L. Mencken who said “The only American invention as perfect as the sonnet is the martini.” As much as I like martinis, and Manhattans, and bourbon (all American inventions), that notion is just hogwash. Aside from the Constitution, baseball, basketball, and the corn dog, America is the birthplace of blues, jazz, rap, abstract expressionism, the American musical, modern dance, and, of course, film noir.
World War I and World War II sent shockwaves all around the world, and whenever something like that happens, the human psyche tries to process what happened. One of the side-effects of that process is new forms of art. After World War II, the Italians invented neorealism and the French turned to epic lyricism, while America took antiheroes, femme fatales, and an inverted take on American morality, meshed it with a German expressionist aesthetic, and got film noir. It’s strange, because at the time America was set to prosper like never before, but still we were dreaming dark dreams.
Kiss Me Deadly, one of my favorite film noir movies, really gets at where part of this anxiety comes from. In the movie private eye Mike Hammer’s chasing after “the great whatsit”, which turns out to be a small box that throws out a golden glow whenever you open it. (Wonder where Quentin Tarantino got inspiration for that briefcase in Pulp Fiction? Look no further.) What’s in the box remains a mystery until it is revealed to have something to do with atomic power – and at the end the heroine opens it too wide and bursts into flames: nuclear apocalypse in miniature.
When America dreams dark dreams, it dreams them in film noir.
Case in point: 1945’s Detour
It was made by a tiny studio for around $20,000 dollars, it runs 68 minutes, and it’s as dark and dreamy as they come. It’s so dark and dreamy in fact that nowadays it comes close to collapsing under its own weight and turning into camp. That’s okay. It’s still great.
The movie starts with a guy walking along a dark road at night looking for a ride to bum. By the end that hitchhiker’s taken on the identity of a dead man, wrangled with a femme fatale, and found himself completely lost. The whole script sparkles with some of the best pulp dialogue ever put on screen:
“That’s life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you. Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all.”
“I guess at least an hour past before I noticed those deep scratches on his right hand. They were wicked, three puffy red lines about a quarter inch apart. “
“As I drove off, it was still raining and the drops streaked down the windshield like tears. “
“In spite of that, I got the impression of beauty, not the beauty of a movie actress, mind you, or the beauty you dream about with your wife, but a natural beauty, a beauty that’s almost homely, because it’s so real.”
All genuine film noir has that feel of being lost in an amoral wilderness that’s cut through with dark shadows and high contrast. Exactly because Detour is so small, so short, and was made without any aspirations for greatness whatsoever, it achieves a kind of film noir perfection. If you like film noir, and want to get an idea just how bleak it was on the B-side of postwar America, this is one to check out.
Next week: more artsy French stuff.
