Noir City Returns with Ann Savage

"The most vicious femme fatale in the history of American movies,” says film noir author Eddie Muller of Ann Savage. Her chilling performance in Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1945 Detour will make you squirm, and possibly breathe a sigh of relief when the movie’s over.

And now you will have the chance to meet this legendary performer in person at the Castro Theatre at the Opening Night of Noir City, the 2nd Annual Film Noir Festival featuring films selected by Muller, the author of The Art of Noir and Dark City Dames.

Savage is an apt guest to kick off the series, which this year will have as its theme “Women on Top,” featuring noir stalwarts like Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Ida Lupino, Susan Hayward and Ann Sheridan. The Film Society hosts a reception Friday, January 16 in honor of Savage with the actress in person. “Ann is still going strong,” says Muller, “and is vibrant at 82 years old.”
The event will launch a two-week series, expanded after a phenomenal success in its first outing a year ago.

Savage showed great promise in early films (ten films in 1943 alone!), leading Columbia to try her at different genres—comedy, Westerns, action, mystery—perhaps the best of these being André de Toth’s spy thriller, Passport to Suez. Howevr, the studio could not find a consistent career path for the talented but unconventional actress. In 1945 she signed on for Detour with the Poverty Row studio, PRC Pictures. In a genre that often thrives on oversimplification, Savage managed to create a complex charater in Vera, starting out as an impenetrable, hardboiled cynic, and ending as a vulnerable, hardboiled cynic. It is the role she will always be remembered by.

The reception will be followed by a screening of Detour, a film that became a cult classic years ago, and whose reputation continues to grow. “Ulmer is one of the most fascinating talents in the history of sub-B pictures,” writes David Thomson. “The prince of under-noir,” Barry Gifford calls him. Ulmer’s personal odyssey from Viennese high art to Hollywood cheapies is a story in itself. He began in the theater working with Max Reinhardt, among others. He ended up coming to the United States as an assistant to his mentor in film, F.W. Murnau.

The making of Detour is a story as well. Having already made the successful B-picture The Black Cat with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, you would think he was in line for a bigger budget, but Ulmer seems to have enjoyed working at the level of the ultra-low budget; he has said that it gave him more artistic freedom. Detour was shot in six days for $25,000.

The unrelenting pessimism of Detour is perhaps unparalleled in American cinema. As the central character, Al Roberts, Tom Neal repeatedly makes terrible decisions compounded upon incredibly bad luck. “That’s life,” he says, “Whichever way you turn, a foot sticks out to trip you up.” The script by Martin Goldsmith crackles with blistering putdowns and snappy retorts. “Not only don’t you have any scruples,” snaps Vera at Al, “you don’t have any brains.”

Ann’s costar Neal led a life straight out of Police Gazette. A violent alcoholic, he later went to prison for six years for murdering his wife in a jealous rage. Detour was a career-defining role for him too.