Did anyone else notice that when Al Roberts starts hitchhiking that in all the clips they show, all the cars are driving on the left side of the road?
I'm assuming that the film just reversed when they made the print, but it's very bizarre when you notice it.
You can't beat these quality B pictures.
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Ebert mentions this in his review:
"And it's strange that the first vehicles to give lifts to the hitchhiking Al seem to have right-hand drives. He gets in on what would be the American driver's side, and the cars drive off on the ``wrong'' side of the road. Was the movie shot in England? Not at all. My guess is that the negative was flipped. Ulmer possibly shot the scenes with the cars going from left to right, then reflected that for a journey from the east to the west coasts, right to left would be more conventional film grammar. Placing style above common sense is completely consistent with Ulmer's approach throughout the film."
I have nothing against Ebert, I think in state of denial these mistakes. I love the picture and these mistakes do add to the bizarre atmosphere, but I am assuming the filmakers filmed it wrong and did not money to change.
CR
it is a mistake in editing, the film is reversed. low budget and they couldn't fix it.
I just watched it for the first time. I noticed that about the steering wheel. Thanks for the probable explanation!
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I noticed the cars on the wrong side of the road, but I think it reflects on the credibility of the narrator's story.
shareLike Ebert said, this was no editing mistake. Ulmer felt it would be better to have all of the driving during the hitchhiking done from right to left to give the impression of east to west. Ulmer probably thought of this AFTER he had already filmed some sequences. had this film been on a bigger budget, the shots would have probably been redone. But alas, they were simply purposefully reversed in editing.
shareI don't think it was an editing mistake. The film is basically the main character's defense to a murder charge. Driving on the wrong side of the road should clue the audience in not to trust everything the narrator is saying about what happened.
shareThat's preposterous. There is not a single thing in the movie that suggests the narrator is not telling us exactly what actually happened. He certainly did not lie to us that people were driving on the left side of the road in right-hand-drive cars in order to mislead us. The negative was flipped for the reason Ebert stated, to save money and because they didn't figure anybody would notice (they were mistaken about that).
shareEbert doesn't know what he is talking about. There is no fixed east to west, left to right in film. It is all relative. The camera moves all the time. He is only guessing, and it is a bad guess.
shareEbert knew exactly what he was talking about. On maps, which are fixed, traveling from east to west means traveling from right to left. Film convention usually conforms to map convention. Whether the audience is conscious of it or not, to have somebody in a movie moving from left to right across the screen when they were supposedly traveling from east to west would seem off. In "Detour" the negative was flipped in a couple of shots because they changed their minds about which way the cars should be going and they didn't have the time or money to shoot them over again.
share