This scene appears to have been filmed at night, with only enough lighting to pick out the actors. B-movies frequently had short shooting schedules since equipment was often rented. For Detour, famously shot in six days, night-shooting would have been obligatory. Genuine "night-for-night" shooting gave a deeper blackness than the twilight-shooting used in A-features (e.g. Marriott's murder in Murder, My Sweet). Detour's paucity can thus be understood as creating an effect that is much more congruent with the noir spirit than are the conventions of A-feature production.
While it is more archetypally noir, this scene is scarcely realistic, the fog seeming rather theatrical. But instead of detracting from the scene's effectiveness, the highly stylised setting enhances it. It is conducive to a more "artistic" mode of filmmaking than conventional Hollywood is generally perceived to be. The overt theatricality of these scenes has been interpreted in the distorted light of German Expressionism. Detour's director, Edgar G. Ulmer, was an assistant to Expressionist auteurs Murnau and Lang, and his films (along with noir in general) show their influence in the use of chiaroscuro and oblique lines. Some commentators have even suggested that low budgets encouraged B-units to "compensate with complicated plots and convoluted atmosphere. Realist denotation would have thus been de-emphasised in favour of expressionist connotation." This argument lends credibility to the suggestion Goldsmith's script deliberately focussed on situations that a low budget would not hinder. The use of Al's confessional monologue triggers highly subjective flashbacks with a paranoid, hallucinatory feel. Certain cheaply executed effects, such as the giant cardboard coffee cup and the constrictive night of a back-projection machine, evoke his increasing delirium, giving a dark and harassed quality to the film. At one point Al announces that we probably don't believe his story. This generates a sense that he is not a dependable and objective surrogate for the audience in the way that Philip Marlowe is. The A-feature hero remains untarnished by his experiences, while Al's are more corrupting and hopeless. His monologue is not a rational account of events delivered to the police (as in Murder, My Sweet) but a confession blurred by self-pity and elaboration. The lack of a lucid, shared viewpoint between audience and protagonist contributes to Detour'snoirceur by negating any faith in the hero or his explanation. Al's remark generates the suspicion that every flashback (i.e. most of the film) could be a lie. profound
These features perhaps verify the view that "as a “poverty row quickie,” Detour is a film that does not need to affirm conventional values and can embrace the subversive implications of film noir more completely than many more obviously distinguished productions." Central to this is a rebuke of the "American dream" that is unrivalled by the noirceur of typical A-features. Double Indemnity (and Scarface and Public Enemy) exhibits a private enterprise ethos that solicits audience sympathy for the criminals. These A-features seem to be dramatised accounts of the chase for the illusive notion of the American dream. They are escapist entertainment, and their depiction of a character prepared to do anything in order to succeed causes them to exude the same romantically tragic fascination of Gatsby's green light. Of course, they also imposed a conventional "crime-doesn"t-pay' death-scene as a moral condemnation of the criminal's activities. Detour has no such moral closure: Al's arrest, rather than death, is shrouded in ambiguity and redolent with the fear of an uncertain fate. Furthermore, Al has no similar urge to succeed. From the very beginning he demonstrates a fatalistic and cynical outlook as well as signs of mental instability: observe his crazed interpretation of a Brahm's waltz at the piano. Therefore, even before he has become embroiled in the noir scenario he has rejected the American dream and been beaten into submission by the overwhelming harshness of the world. This is manifested in his scorn for things normally indicative to the American dream: his incomprehension of Sue's desire for fame; his abhorrence of money ('What was it? A piece of paper crawling with germs.') and his use of baseball metaphors to lament the state of the world, baseball usually being associated with aspiration.
An important aspect of Detour, and one without which no film noir would be complete, is the presence of the femme fatale. Vera fulfils this role, but her character differs significantly from the traditional fatal woman of A-features such as Murder, My Sweet and The Maltese Falcon. One reason for this is a resurgence of the economic determinism already discussed. Vera is just as destitute as Al, a detail that may have been written into the script so that her costume would not look out of place. She has been described as a "skid row femme fatale," and, as well as being cheaper, this is somehow more realistic and less romantic than the glamorous sirens of fashion-conscious A-features. Accordingly, Vera inverts the traditional femme fatale role.
