<Detour Restored
Posted by ChiO on 12/11/2018, 1:41 am
Saw the restored Detour last night at the Gene Siskel Film Center. I knew it would be a stunning experience immediately upon clearly seeing the road left behind as the credits rolled. Clear and crisp throughout...except when Sue and Al walk in the fog...and Al and Haskell are in the rain.
Don't worry, Don. Vera still gets choked up and Fate still sticks out a foot and puts a finger on Al.
Re: Detour Restored
Posted by Don Malcolm on 12/11/2018, 6:28 am, in reply to "Detour Restored"
Here’s a little bit about how they brought DETOUR back to a level of “maudit clarity”:
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6055-a-new-restoration-brings-detour-back-to-the-big-screen
Look for a blu-Ray sometime next year.
For me, those scenes in the fog and rain are the most inventive aspects of the film, though I expect the coffee cup to be literally overwhelming in its 4K incarnation...
Re: Detour Restored
Posted by ChiO on 12/11/2018, 7:00 am, in reply to "Re: Detour Restored"
Is there something incongruous about Detour and Blu-Ray in the same discussion? Well, I just added the Blu-Ray of The Magnificent Ambersons to the shelf, so - just as darker night follows night - Detour must join it.
Re: Detour Restored
Posted by Don Malcolm on 12/11/2018, 9:56 am, in reply to "Re: Detour Restored"
Yes, but we're talking RKO and Stanley Cortez vs. PRC and long-time Columbia veteran Benjamin Kline, who was certainly experienced (375 credits on IMDB, not counting multiple episodes for various TV series) and certainly knew how to work quickly (a "B unit" stalwart for Columbia for more than 15 years).
Some kind of insane connection between the two films would be great, if there only was one--a pity that Ann Savage didn't play Lucy Morgan, or that Tim Holt didn't play Al Roberts...!
There's an amusing anecdote in Lisa Morton and Kent Adamson's bio of Ann Savage concerning the shooting of the hitchhiking scene in the Arizona desert (actually near Barstow)--in the middle of the shooting, after Savage had been sufficiently "dirtied up" for the shot, a real-life passing motorist managed to enter the shot and offered Savage a ride...he apparently was rather insistent about it, much to Savage's disgusted surprise.
Re: Detour Restored
Posted by ChiO on 12/11/2018, 12:16 pm, in reply to "Re: Detour Restored"
Isn't what happened to the ending of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS as dark as the ending of DETOUR?
There's your connection - Fate tripped Orson and Al.
Re: Detour Restored
Posted by Don Malcolm on 12/11/2018, 1:29 pm, in reply to "Re: Detour Restored"
Yes, but what happened to the ending isn't actually in the movie. (I mean, the ending is there, but only a precious few will know that it's not the ending that was supposed to be there. And they won't be able to connect those dots.)
For that, we need a doc-pic that puts it all together. With the story of AMBERSONS' production told in the style of DETOUR, with (more than) a few liberties.
Cross-cutting wildly between Al dragging Haskell around and Orson "caught" by carnival, for example.
With a few sequences of Dolores Del Rio auditioning for the part of Vera.
With multiple nightmare sequences of Al dragging Haskell and it's a different face each time--Edmund Macdonald, Tom Neal, Akim Tamiroff, Ray Collins, and finally Orson dragging HIMSELF into the rain-soaked desert....
Plus, a special appearance by Glenn Anders doing his Nelson Rockefeller imitation with ever-so-slightly altered lines. "After you're done with all this, you're gonna want to kill me, FELLA."
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