The Petrified Forest

This Depression-era gangster play is often credited as Humphrey Bogart's breakout role, and features him as the criminil that drives the whole story's drama. As Duke Mantee he's a fugitive who takes refuge in an isolated desert truckstop with a motley bunch of characters from various walks of life, holding them hostage as he plays for time. Amongst them is the film's hero, Alan (Leslie Howard), and heroine, Gabrielle (Bette Davis), who must bargain for their lives and freedom.

Gabrielle is a gas station girl in the middle of the desert. She yearns to leave and wants to experience life and the world's culture, but she's naive and eager and easily impressed (the unintended irony of this 1937 film is that her dreams of going to France are ill-conceived with WWII just around the corner). Alan is a 'hoboing' British writer - charming, uselss, and spouting fatalistic, pretensiously self-loathing garbage. Alongside these characters are an all-American football muscleman, an old timer who admires Mantee, a host of thuggish henchmen, a rich couple, and a black chaffeur.

Bogart's character, Duke Mantee, is a welcome change of pace from the hothead gangsters of the early 1930s. He's edgy and haunted, and looks like a tired animal. Bogart essays it with an exagerrated wiseguy cadence, but plays it with understated hardness and the washed out body language of a man who simply can't run anymore. By comparison, Howard and Gable are irritatingly lighthanded in their portrayal of the leads.

The setup of the hostage situation is fine in itself but once all the characters are in the same room together it becomes way too talky and melodramatic. The film just grinds to a standstill as they all start having unlikely deep and meaningful conversations about life and love, and Howard's character is quite a wet hero in comparison to Bogart's hardened and worldweary villain. As far as gangster films go it's pretty slow stuff, but what's interesting about it is the way it reflects the context of its era.

The petrified forest of the title is an allusion to America's great 1930s dustbowl; a time and place where Americans became disallusioned with the country's pioneering spirit. We have characters actively engaged in mythmaking, especially Gramp Maple (Charley Grapewin), who tells tales of pioneering heroes and the old west. By extension, Mantee represents the crooked path this new and hobbled America has led some of its more daring patriots, whereas Alan represents the uselessness of intellectual excess. Alan is indicative of humanity stretching itself in this direction too far, like Icarus flying too close to the sun, and there's a subtext to his self-loathing that suggests the Depression itself is nature's revenge for humanity getting too clever. I definitely don't agree with any of that, but that's the subtext that the production team no doubt hoped would elevate yet another 1930s gangster film. Unfortunately, it's just too talky for its own good and I got pretty bored by Howard and Davis' routine fairly quickly.

DIRECTOR: Archie Mayo
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Charles Kenyon and Delmer Daves. Based on the play by Robert E. Sherwood, who was inspired by John Dillinger.
KEY ACTORS: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Charley Grapewin, Porter Hall, Dick Foran, Genevieve Tobin

RELATED TEXTS:
- The Broadway play The Petrified Forest by Robert E. Sherwood.
- Duke Mantee was based on real-life gangster, John Dillinger. For a film about Dillinger, see Public Enemies.
- Heat Lightning, Key Largo and The Desperate Hours; similar films (two of which also starred Bogart).
- Bogart reprised his role as Duke Mantee opposite Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall in a live TV special of The Petrified Forest in 1955.