starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart
directed by Archie Mayo
82 minutes
Gabrielle Maple (Bette Davis) takes care of her family's roadside diner in Arizona while her father is away on business. Alan Squier (Leslie Howard), a hitchhiker, stops at the diner for a bite to eat. She falls for him but his broken heart won't let him reciprocate her feelings. Alan leaves but returns when he learns Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart), a killer, and his gang are headed for the diner.
A sandstorm forces many people, including Duke Mantee and his gang, Alan, and others to take shelter in the diner. The police are searching for Mantee and the tension rises as the sandstorm and the armed fugitives force the others to stay put.
The first half of this movie is a little slow moving. It isn't until everyone is trapped inside the diner that the situation really starts to get tense.
The Petrified Forest was originally a play. Howard and Bogart played the same roles on Broadway as they did in the movie.
Leslie Howard's performance is the centerpiece of this film but Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart both play major roles in it. I wasn't so sure about Leslie Howard's performance at first, he seemed a bit out of place, but by the end of the movie I was dying to see how it would end.
Porter Hall played the part of Gabrielle's father. I've seen him in a number of things. I saw him most recently in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943).
I feel as though I've seen movies like this before. Key Largo (1948) is one that come to mind. Humphrey Bogart was in both movies but he played the hero in the latter film.
The ending really stands out if you stop and think about it. How many movies of this era had such an ending where the bad guy kills the hero and gets away in the end?
The acting was a little wooden in places but there were also moments that felt very moving. Humphrey Bogart was quite good as Duke Mantee. On the whole I thought it was very good but not excellent.
The Petrified Forest: Menace in the Desert (2005)
16 minutes
This short documentary feature was included on the DVD that I borrowed from the library.
The feature is divided up into a few chapters
- Bogie's Last Stand
- The Draw of the Western Myth
- Shades of Noir
- The Plays End
The talking heads in this feature are
- Alain Silver - filmmaker / film historian
- Eric Lax - author
- Mark A. Viera - author
- Robert Sklar - author / professor of film (NYU)
- Andrew Sarris - author / film critic
- Dr. Drew Caspar - professor of film (USC)
Subjects they talk about include
- the movie's impact on Bogart's career
- the movie's impact on subsequent films especially film noir
- the decision to keep the original ending despite its tragic notes
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