Rent The Petrified Forest (1936)

Poetic Realism. - The Petrified Forest review by Steve

This is famous for Humphrey Bogart’s breakthrough performance as Duke Mantee, a killer modelled on depression era gangster, John Dillinger. But the best part of the film is the opening half an hour of romantic dalliance between Leslie Howard and Bette Davis. She plays a young dreamer trapped in the Arizona desert, aching for escape. He is a rootless poet running low on hope. Their ethereal chemistry is very poignant.

They meet in The Petrified Forest, a desert made of fossils, a wilderness where obsolescent creatures come to die; like Mantee, the last of the western outlaws, or the poet who is a disillusioned, exhausted idealist. A few other archetypes gather in the lonely diner where Bette marks time as a waitress: there’s a patriot, an athlete, a wealthy couple…

After the exceptional opening, the dialogue becomes aimless and overwrought. But the film maintains its grip. This is too early for film noir, but it has that feel. Partly because of the slowly darkening restaurant as the night falls, but mainly because of its sadness, its atmosphere of pessimism and malign destiny.

As for Bogart, he has a strong, malevolent presence, and he dominates the later scenes, but he is awkward and not yet a star. Archie Mayo’s staging of Robert Sherwood’s poetic realist play is rich and full of mythology and wistful symbolism. But it's the melancholy rapport between Howard and Davis that cuts deepest, both searching for meaning in the haunted desert as world sinks into the depression and fascism.