Wed 19 Aug 2020
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: THE PETRIFIED FOREST (1936).
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews[12] Comments
REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:
THE PETRIFIED FOREST. Warner Brothers, 1936. Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Genevieve Tobin, Dick Foran, Charlie Grapewin, Joe Sawyer, Porter Hall, and Adrian Morris. Screenplay by Charles Kenyon and Delmer Daves, from the play by Robert E. Sherwood. Directed by Archie Mayo.
Sherwood’s play and the film made from it have not aged well, but if you can accept the artificiality and pardon the pseudo-poetics, it remains oddly fascinating and very watchable.
The contrived plot has wandering writer manqué Leslie Howard turning up at an isolated eat-here-and-get-gas joint owned by self-styled militiaman Porter Hall, run by his would-be poet daughter Bette Davis (she reads Francois Villon and dreams of seeing Paris) with the eager assistance of lustful pump-jockey Dick Foran, and the interference of grandfather Charles Grapewin, who never stops cadging drinks and telling about the time he met Billy the Kid.
Then into this mix of flammable futility walks Duke Mantee (Bogart) and his retinue of desperadoes, weary with hunting and fain would lie down. And the rest of the show is the collision of the gangsters’ irresistible force against the all-too-moveable dreams of the others.
It’s all quite talky and contrived, but I found myself drawn into it anyway. Time and again the aspirations of the ordinary folk get dashed to bits by the bad guys till only Leslie Howard’s doomed romanticism is left to counter Bogart’s lethal fatalism. They spar like gunfighters jockeying for position, edging toward the final shoot-out that must leave one of them dead in the dust, and when it comes, it hits with real intensity.
The actors carry Sherwood’s ideas with a bluff grace that rises to poesy. I was particularly taken by Dick Foran’s horny has-been football star and Porter Hall’s would-be tough-guy, perfect foils for Howard and Bogart. Davis evokes just the right note of dream-struck, and Grapewin’s old-timer is simply delightful, needy and comic at the same time.
And then there’s Bogart, splendidly awful in the film that established him in Hollywood.
Warners bought the play in a package deal with Leslie Howard pre-set to star. They had Cagney and Robinson under contract, but Howard insisted on Bogart, who played Mantee in the stage production. Bogey’s performance is stagey, mannered and over-emphatic, but it’s riveting. The minute he lurches in, arms akimbo, face stamped with the mask of tragedy, it’s as if Frankenstein’s monster had invaded the set. You simply can’t take your eyes off him, bad as he is. And he gets the best line in the whole movie: “You can talk sittin’ down, I heard ya doin’ it.â€
Yes, he’s way too theatrical, but somehow Bogie fits this film as no other actor could have. I’m glad he shed the mannerisms and moved on to become the legend that he was, but I still appreciate this hammy debut into the ranks of the Tough Guys.
August 19th, 2020 at 10:26 pm
Roughly twenty years ago a revival was staged at The Shaw Festival, Niagara On The Lake, a great town at the time; in fact considered by many the prettiest in Canada. The show was excellent, and I agree with Dan about every word in his review of the film, which is corny, over the top and as performed by Bogart, wanting. I thought his work terrible, but not others, especially Dick Foran,Charley Grapewin and Howard managed to get through dignity intact.
An addenda; The Petrified Forest was performed in the mid-fifties, live on television, with Bogart repating his part, Henry Fonda replacing Leslie Howard and Lauren Bacall taking Bette Davis’s part. A not good curiosity, but better than the picture.
August 19th, 2020 at 11:44 pm
I have the Blu Ray here and noticed the film runs 82 minutes, but the play some thirty five minutes longer. Lots of civilized material abandoned in favor of this faux tough guy crap.
August 20th, 2020 at 10:42 am
As far I recall I never got around to seeing this film until maybe 10 or 15 years ago. Details are vague, but I think Dan’s review is right on. I do remember two thoughts, somewhat contradictory, I had at the time. (1) No wonder this is the movie that made Bogart a star, and (2) how stagey the whole affair was.
August 20th, 2020 at 6:54 pm
I liked the first half of this film.
But then it started degenerating, before the depressing, grim bummer of a finale.
I like reading plays. But unfortunately have never read anything by Sherwood. Need to correct this!
August 20th, 2020 at 7:44 pm
The film is too stagey by half despite a couple of decent naturalistic performances by Grapewin and Foran. But overacting and theatrics aside when Bogart walks on screen it is almost impossible not to look at him. Before Duke Mantee Bogie was best known for originating the line “Tennis, anyone?” on stage (Robert Young did the movie version). He had to know this was a game changer for his career.
It was perhaps one of the few times when Davis wisely chooses to play down a bit compared to Howard and Bogart, and especially Bogart, but whatever its flaws, and the flaws in Bogart’s performance, you can’t miss what the camera sees in him. Love him or hate him there is a savagery to Bogie’s performance that is hard to miss.
August 21st, 2020 at 9:41 pm
LOVED YOUR REVIEW ! And ALL COMMENTS and agree with every point.
I happen to be a Bogart and Bette Davis film and biography collector and I own every / have read EVERY one. The films, several times each.
One mistake we “21st century experts” tend to make is that we are not thinking like 20th century people. (or 16th century people when asked to understand that age)
This film and stage production was unique and wonderful in its time. (ppfft, not our time) Leslie Howard threatened Warner Brothers to either cast Bogart… or else! and WB backed down.
This was not really the film that established Bogart as a “A” film hero (he’d been “B” since 1931); that would be “High Sierra”, 1941, screenplay by future best friend, John Huston.
Bogart and Davis were BIG BIG box office names, having made 2 films together, and later two more.
Bad Sister 1931, Three On A Match 1932, Marked Woman 1937, Dark Victory 1939.
BOGART… hailed as the best actor of the 20th century, by 20th century people. First actor to earn 1 million for a film.
August 23rd, 2020 at 11:22 am
And for what film did Bogart earn a million? That number was not addressed until the sixties with Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor the first. As to Bogart being hailed as the best actor? By whom, he was rated by the British Critical establishment as the greatest movie star, but that was never true in his life time. And it is not true now.
August 24th, 2020 at 10:12 am
Whoops ! My bad. Not $1 Mill. As to his lifetime popularity …
Bogart was the first to earn $200,000 for a film. In 1946, he was the most popular actor in the world and signed a contract for $200k/film; this guaranteed him $3 million over 15 years.
In 1954, he also earned $20k/week during “Sabrina”, But, he died in ’57.
In 1947 he was the highest paid actor in the world at $467,360.
Between ’43 and ’49 Bogart was among the Top Ten Stars chosen by Theater owners, 7 yrs running. Maybe longer?
(source: Bogart, Jeffery Meyers, 1997, pgs 218, 151, dust jacket)
August 24th, 2020 at 2:47 pm
Put up the Motion Picute exhibitors poll for clarification. I will assume the contract numbers are more or less accurate, but Clark Gable signed a ten thousand dollar a week contract with Metro for fifty two weeks over seven years, and independent people, like John Wayne, Cary Grant, others earned more than both. At least some of the time. As for the Bette Davis films, it is true that Marked Woman co-starred both, but the other three are negligible, for example, in Bad Sister both play tertiary parts, the leads were Conrad Nagel and Sidney Fox a girl who died young. In Dark Victory Bogart had graduated to secondary in support of both Davis and her favorite leading man, George Brent.
September 1st, 2020 at 7:03 pm
On a revisit, everything and certainly every performer has to slug his way through what Graham Greene called Robert Sherwood’s cosmic ideas; not intended as a compliment. Alastair Cooke referred to Sherwood’s half-baked philophy. I think they are one in the same. And I still do not care for Bogart or Duke Mantee, but it is more than watchable. Compelling in its old fashioned naiveite, and that is intended to be a compliment, and/or praise. And I can see why Howard was the only one to play Ashley Wilkes.
September 1st, 2020 at 7:42 pm
A fine wrapup to this blog’s coverage of a movie that (in my opinion) is very very good but not quite great. Thanks, Barry!
September 10th, 2020 at 11:54 am
[…] year after The Petrified Forest (recently reviewed here), Bogie found himself again playing a gangster on the run in a film based on a popular (and […]