The Petrified Forest (1936)

(On Cable TV, April 2019) By 1936, Humphrey Bogart was a repertory player in the Warner Brothers stable inching toward leading-man status, and they were clearly trying a few things for him to see how he’d catch the audience’s attention. One of his early successes was The Petrified Forest, a thriller in which he plays a gangster evading a police chase, and taking hostage the patrons of a small desert diner. It’s clearly not meant to feature Bogart as a lead character—that would be Leslie Howard as a writer turned drifter who’s affected by the characters and events of the diner. As a semi-confined thriller, the film makes a good double-bill with Bogart’s latter Key Largo, but does make effective use of its desert atmosphere to crank the tension between its characters. Bogart, young and with a full head of hair, is convincing as the heavy (something that would clearly be noticed in later films) but the film isn’t quite a gangster picture. As the third act rolls in, it becomes closer to a contemplative meditation on life and death, as befits its theatrical origin. That’s when our intellectual protagonist is transformed into someone who discovers, perhaps too late, a reason to live. Great dialogue and great characters make this a potent 1930s film, although let’s be honest—most viewers will seek this out for Bogart first.