The Petrified Forest

The lore behind this film is arguably better known than the film itself, if for no other reason than the fact that it made Humphrey Bogart's name in Hollywood. Before this, Bogart and the Hollywood film industry had more or less written each other off after Bogart had appeared in a few minor projects for Fox, Columbia (which was then a "poverty row" minor player itself), and Universal. Returning to the stage, he took what was, for him at the time, an unusual role. He played a "heavy," Duke Mantee, in The Petrified Forest, alongside Leslie Howard.

Warner Brothers wanted Leslie Howard to reprise his role in their proposed film version but the star threatened to walk if the role of Mantee went to the studio's choice, Edward G. Robinson. Howard insisted that the role be played by the actor who had played it on the stage with such convincing ferocity. Warners relented and the rest, as they say, is history.

That history sets up some expectations that the film, for a certain amount of time, doesn't seem to live up to. Watching the set-up, with starry-eyed dreamer and poet Leslie Howard literally wandering into the life of fellow dreamer Bette Davis, one begins to wonder why the film is being released on DVD as a gangster movie. It has the feel of any one of a million "meet cute" melodramas and there's no hint, besides the cover art, of what is yet to come.

Then the sea change comes. Once Bogart's Duke Mantee enters the picture, the movie becomes something else entirely and, while Bogart's gangster doesn't have the explosive psychosis of Cagney's Tom Powers or Cody Jarrett, it's obvious from the moment he appears on screen that he could mop the floor with anyone else in the movie. It's also obvious that he has no qualms about doing so. Bogart's performance is so electric that you can see how audiences of the day walked out of the movie and felt they had just witnessed the birth of a star.

It's too bad the rest of the movie isn't up to the level of Bogart's performance. Director Archie Mayo doesn't do much to hide its stagebound origins and his pedestrian handling of the action and pacing makes one wonder what someone like Howard Hawks or Raoul Walsh might have done with the material. Bette Davis and Leslie Howard are fine but neither delivers the craft we've seen from them in better pictures (like Gone With the Wind and Intermezzo for Howard, Jezebel and All About Eve for Davis).

Nevertheless, the film is a classic due to Bogart's performance and Warner Home Video treats it with the appopriate respect: a pretty good transfer, a commentary by Bogart's biographer and film noir expert Eric Lax (who does an excellent job of recounting Bogart's career and this film's place in it), and a featurette on the film's making that includes interviews with the same experts from the other titles in Warner's gangster series. These interviews make the film seem better than it actually is. The "Warner Night At The Movies" extra provides an extra nugget of gold with the cartoon "The Coo Coo Nut Grove" that pokes fun at the period's celebrities.

The Petrified Forest also has an extra the other discs in Warner's Gangster Collection don't have: a radio adaptation of the film! Featuring a lot of the players from the film's cast, the radio drama's script is, in some ways, a little tighter than the screenplay and it makes for enjoyable listening. You can almost feel Duke Mantee's sneering presence in the room with you and that should not be taken lightly. -- Christopher Hyatt