Worf
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 5,206
- Location
- Troy, New York, USA
"The Petrified Forest"
Assuming this was a normal A-movie release in 1936, one can say they aren't making these movies anymore. Basically, it's a philosophical theory and social commentary ramble - and a darn fine one - with some, for the time, action-aventure shooting scenes thrown in.
A lot of "big" questions are brought up - America's capitalist system and the economy's depression era failings, individualism versus societal conformity, crime as immorality that undermines the state versus crime as an expression of individuality and freedom in a overbearing state, marriage for money and security versus marriage for love and a future of promise, artists as the embodiment of special talents needing tender nurturing, money for future security or present pleasure and on and on it goes.
Ninety-five percent set in a small roadside diner and gas station in the desolate desert of 1936 Arizona, Bette Davis (never looking more youthful and innocent - none of her famous hardness can be seen even at the edges) plays the artist-dreamer daughter of the diner's owner who feels trapped in her dead-end world. Leslie Howard plays a drifter - a down-and-out-and-dispirited failed English novelist - who fuels Davis' escapist dreams and sexual fantasies.
Most of the philosophical drama is driven by these two with Davis' father and the young football player who works there representing conventional thinking, her grandfather, the lost frontier and original spirit of can-do Americanism, and a wealthy couple representing class divide and the aforementioned questions of marriage. The drama is kicked forward when Bogart - playing a famous Dillinger-type criminal-on-the-lam - and his gang take the diner patrons and workers hostages.
This allows for some gunfights and an eventual climatic shootout, but its real purpose is that it allows the philosophical discussion to get richer by example with Bogart representing the alienated individual gone rogue. For an in-the-era-of-the-code movie, there is also some ahead-of-its-time acknowledgment of racial struggles with an outright dig at a black man being subservient to a white man - not your typical code movie and wonderful to see.
I love this movie as the issues are real, raw and treated with respect - no pat answers or easy stereotypes. It is a bit preachy, but since no side is given full support, it doesn't turn you off. The acting is top notch - but IMHO, it's Davis' film. As noted, hard to see this movie being made today as a major release.
In an earlier review I talked about the by-play (or lack of it) between the Black Gangster in Bogart's crew and the Chauffer with the rich couple. Blacks did run with white gangsters back then. Dillinger had a black associate for a time. The conversations between the two were fascinating. For years I had a close friend at work, we'd eat lunch daily or go for drinks afterwards (I always had coffee). Whenever I stopped by his desk to pick him up I'd say....
"Boss let's lam outta here!"
Great film.
Worf