The Petrified Forest
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Movie Reviews of The Petrified Forest
Movie Review: INCISIVE CHARACTER STUDY....
Summary: 5 Stars
Part of Warner Bros. gangster package, "The Petrified Forest" isn't so much a gangster film as it is a character study of various people held hostage by a gangster and his gang. Set at a run-down gas station/cafe in a section of the Arizona desert called Black Mesa, it tells of vicious thug Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart) taking over the station while waiting to flee with his moll (who's never seen). The group includes a wandering, aimless writer (Leslie Howard), a dreamy waitress named Gabrielle (Bette Davis), her father who owns the cafe and the grandfather (who's a hoot). Gaby (Davis) loves poetry and yearns to go to France while the writer, Alan (Howard) is bone-weary and seems to have a death wish. Other hostages include a wealthy couple and their chauffer whose car Mantee hijacks. Based on the play, "Forest" seems stagy on film yet it bristles with excellent dialogue and performances. The setting is claustrophobic but is meant to be. With the wind howling, a sandstorm brewing, tumbleweeds blowing around---the air seethes with tension and isolation. The DVD print shows it's age in spots but is overall decent. As a time capsule of Davis and Bogart early in their careers it's worth watching just for that. But the film stands on it's own as a good melodrama and a chance to see how fine an actor Leslie Howard was. He and Davis had done "Of Human Bondage" together in 1934 and here they basically team well only with Davis in a vastly different role (a good girl). Very recommended for vintage film lovers. Enjoy.Movie Review: BOGIE'S FIRST STARRING ROLE
Summary: 3 Stars
THE PETRIFIED FOREST (1936) is set in a rundown diner baking in the Arizona heat. Inside, fugitive killer Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart in his first major starring role) sweats out a manhunt, holding disillusioned writer Alan Squier (Leslie Howard), young Gabby Maple (Bette Davis) and a handful of others hostage. In the film, Howard and Bogart recreate their stage roles and Bette Davis reteams with her "Of Human Bondage" co-star Howard.
Extras: a 1936 newsreel, musical short "Rhythmitis," "The Coo Coo Nut Grove" cartoon and the new featurette "The Petrified Forest: Menace in the Desert." The superior commentary is by Bogart biographer Eric Lax and there's an entertaining audio of the "Petrified Forest" radio broadcast starring Bogart, Tyrone Power and Joan Bennett.
Movie Review: A lovely little piece of 30's Americana
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this tape mainly because Bette Davis is in it. She is very young here, and not yet the cigarette-smoking, booze-swilling vamp she would play in later roles.
Great as this film is, Bette's role is a minor one, and offers her no latitude to portray the multi-layered character studies she was well capable of. She was aware of this.
Bette learned all too late, that the studio she worked for, Warner Brothers, was mainly interested in producing "Men's pictures" with gangsters, wanderers and ne'er-do-wells. Actresses were there only to provide the visual dessert.
Compare Bette's minimal role in this movie with the "fire and music" of her performance in "All About Eve", where she plays a character who is totally multi-faceted and completely believable--a film not by Warner Brothers, but by 20th Century Fox. Bette would spend many years battling Warner's for better roles, which very rarely came her way.
Having seen several of her later films (check out "Beyond the Forest"--"what a DUMP!"), I find Bette's performance in "The Petrified Forest" to be an interesting change. She makes a minor role into something very special.
Movie Review: Fascinating film debut for Humphrey Bogart
Summary: 4 Stars
Actually, this was not quite Bogart's debut. He had been in a few utterly forgettable films in tiny roles in the early 1930s before returning to Broadway, but this is his "real" debut.THE PETRIFIED FOREST had been a highly successful stage play starring Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart, and Warner Brothers wanted to do a film version of it. They therefore approached Howard with the offer, indicating that they would like to have him reprise his starring role, and have him star opposite Edward G. Robinson as Duke Mantee. Howard, however, indicated that he would only make the film if his Broadway costar, Bogart, played Duke Mantee. At this point in his career, Bogart's acting career had consisted primarily in playing juvenile parts in various plays (the famous line "Tennis anyone?" is perhaps mythically attributed to one of his roles, but sums up the spirit of onstage persona) and failed attempts to break into film. Playing Duke Mantee had been a dramatic departure for Bogart, who had never previously played a heavy. Luckily for film history, Howard insisted that he would not make THE PETRIFIED FOREST unless Bogart played Mantee.
Historically, the most important thing about this film is that it launched Bogart's film career. Although he would spend the next four years playing a huge number of gangsters, he was, nonetheless, after this film, a Hollywood mainstay, becoming the number four gangster in the Warner Brother stable after Robinson, Cagney, and Raft.
THE PETRIFIED FOREST is, however, entertaining on its own. The one great negative of the film is the fact that it is very obviously a film version of a stage play. The action of the film is limited to only a few locations, and overall the production has a very static feel. Although there are some interesting sets, with some fascinating painted backdrops of Arizona landscape (some of it was shot live, but most of it is done in a studio), the real interest in the film lies in the performances. Leslie Howard made far too few films for my taste. I know he was deeply involved in the stage, but he was both immensely talented and quite charismatic. Unfortunately, his bizarre death cut his talent off far too soon (during WW II, the Luftwaffe shot down a plane he was in, thinking that a military or political VIP was on it). Bogart is striking as Duke Mantee. Bette Davis is as enjoyable in this as any film I have seen her in. I have to confess that by and large I don't care for Bette Davis. She has a tendency to over enunciate every word in a way that is not merely unnatural but a little unnerving. She never seems at ease on screen. She always seems to be "acting." Still, she is well suited to this role.
Movie Review: Leslie is the star, but Humphrey's the cover guy? Strange...
Summary: 2 Stars
I could sum this up in a very brief paragraph, and I will, because it simply did not thrill me to the depths of my soul, leaving me appropriately petrified. Bette Davis was fine. Leslie Howard is, as usual, a watery intellectual, this time turned hitchhiker. Humphrey Bogart is the tough guy whose entire role required little more than sitting pointing a gun at people. The others were unremarkable.
This movie wants so much to live, and love, and be loved, but there is nothing to be found for it - not here nor anywhere else. It longs to be buried somewhere in the Petrified Forest, where the winds can blow over it, and perhaps - being so chocked full of dramatic, poetic statements, some will leak out from its grave, and the occasional tourist will hear the gentle whisper, "'Tis for this end that we twain are met!"
Let this movie rest in peace.