The Petrified Forest (1936)

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It is his film. not only for admirable performance but for the work of his partners. it is, in same measure, a surprising modern film. because it is a film about life, survive, heroism and desillusions who escapes by Hollywood classic formula. sure, it is adaptation of a play and you feel that scene by scene. all - from characters to the story are familiar. Humphrey Bogart gives the lines defining his great roles and Bette Davis reminds her skills for the vulnerable young woman looking for Charming Prince. but something change the expectations of viewer. maybe, the precise show of an universe who defines near reality in more exact manner. maybe Charley Grapewin job, shadow of past in fight for survive to present. anymore, Leslie Howard has the science and the gift to propose the best axis of a story of too deep solitude. and that did "The Petrified Forest" an obvious must see.

If you can buy into what eventually happens, this is a film that leaves you stunned. A group of sad people find themselves in a desert diner, near the Petrified Forest. The forest is a symbol of the loss of vitality, cast in stone forever. Everyone here is living in the past with no prospects for the future. Leslie Howard has wasted his life despite great potential. He has become petrified. At least they have their lives when gangster, Duke Mantee, Humphrey Bogart, comes along and even that is threatened. Dukes days are numbered because he has been betrayed. The strength of this movie is the set of stories that are presented as they wait around. It's sort of Samuel Beckett time, an existentialist banquet. Watch Bette Davis as she vacillates between hope and despair.

Archie Mayo directed this fine adaptation of the famous stage play that stars Leslie Howard as Alan Squire, a philosophical hobo(and poet) on his way to the Pacific ocean, who stops in the desert diner of Gabrielle Maple(played by a young Bette Davis) and brightens her life with his philosophy and experience. The other patrons think he is a joke, but Alan is just different, and their lives will take a dramatic turn when wanted gangster Duke Mantee(played by Humphrey Bogart) arrives with his men and holds them all hostage, leading to much discussion before the authorities close in... Intelligent and compelling film with fine acting, especially Bogart in a star-making performance. Good direction hides the stagy nature of the story, and result is most interesting and memorable.

Leslie Howard stole the show here as the philosopher-writing drifter who drifts into the lonely life of Bette Davis, a waitress with aspirations of going to Paris, in this 1936 film.Howard, who tells his tales of woe, talking about winning the war with nature and finding brief, but tragic love with Davis.As Davis's grandfather, Charley Grapewin, Uncle Henry of "The Wizard of Oz," fame brings comic relief as an old-timer obsessed with old days of Jesse James.Humphrey Bogart, as Duke, the crazed killer enters the film with his gang in taking over the diner and hurling all sorts of people into the dingy place as hostages.Frustrated with his life and wanting to give Gabrielle (Davis) an opportunity, Howard asks Duke to do something which the crazed killer complies with at film's end.This is a film of emotional turmoil, of dreaming beyond your dreams. That desert atmosphere with the gusting wind tells you what this film is all about.