***The Survival Of The Fittest-The Retreat Of The Intellectuals-Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis’ The Petrified Forest  

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

The Petrified Forest, starring Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Leslie Howard, MGM, 1936

Whether the film under review, The Petrified Forest, used that famous natural site in Arizona intentionally as a symbol for the malaise of the 1930s or not, especially the retreat of the intellectuals, viewing the film almost 80 years later brought that thought directly to mind as I followed the dialogue and the plotline. The 1930s overall was not a good decade for humankind with the defeats of many progressive organizations under the onslaught of the international reaction in the heart of the world-wide Depression. The rise of the Nazis in Germany and their adherents elsewhere and the defeat in Spain spelled out the problem for all who wished to see. The 1930s was also a decade when, partially in response to those defeats and partially as a desire to withdraw from the public square, from the hectic post-World War I modern world with it grinding mechanization and dehumanization, as vividly described in poetry, novels, painting and the like, saw the retreat of the intellectuals as well. That trend is fittingly portrayed here by Leslie Howard as Alan the wandering British ex-pat writer who in the past had shown some little talent which had not grown with time who had lost his intellectual moorings, had become if not cynical then fatalistic about his place in the world as he found himself out in the Arizona desert heading west.

Here is how it plays out as we get an opening shot of Alan, the wayward intellectual, against the vastness, the emptiness, and the beauty of the desert landscape particularly in the area of the Petrified Forest, a place where Mother Nature has turned something living into its opposite, wood into stone, as if to mock a modern world defying her powers. That struggle, that seemingly endless struggle against the furies of Mother Nature and what she spits up can stand as background, as a cautionary tale to modern humankind, to the action of the film.

Even out in the wilderness humankind, modern humankind, travelling by automobile (or by thumb, a second cousin to that automobile idea), needs services and a place to stop for a minute anyway, a place to brush of the dust of the trail west. So our man Alan finds himself at the last café and gas station that side of the desert. And finds himself in need of something to eat and although he is penniless he stops to cadge a meal. While there in that seen better days roadside diner he begins to meet the characters who will fill out the story. A football jock turned gas jockey in the hard pressed 1930s when even the college educated found work hard to come by whose main aim in love seems to be to woo the café waitress who we will meet in a moment, an old time prospector/pioneer, who followed X number of generations into America west, west to the next, well, the next possibility. That next possibility for Pappy was not to finally reach the coast, the Pacific coast and land’s end but right there in the hard scrabble desert, the place where survival depends on keeping your wits about you. Survived and was holding onto a small fortune that he was saving for his granddaughter when he died, and not before when it might do her some good. Well, Pappy made it, survived to tell some tales, mainly tall tales.

But above all Alan meets Gabby (played by Bette Davis). Gabby is Pappy’s granddaughter (or rather Gabrielle since she was born in France and had come west when her father returned from France after World War I with his bride, who however could not stay and went back to France pronto). Gabby of the youthful dreams, a pretty standard youthful dream but a dream nevertheless, of getting the hell out of where she is and going to Paris once Pappy passes on. Paris so she can find herself, Paris so she can reunite with her mother, Paris so she can write or paint or do something besides serving them off the arm in that dusty old café, Paris to get the grime and grit out of her month. She tells her dreams to Alan while he wolfs down a bowl of soup, speaks of what she wants in the world. Alan, world-wary, world-weary gathers together a momentary spark of interest and they do a little serious flirting. What else could it be out there in the wilderness. Flirting aided by Gabby’s interest in French poetry, her interest in the 15^th century French poet, Francois Villon, another man who sensed that he was caught in a foreign land although he was a native, sensed that he did not belong in proper society (and who acted out on that sense as a desperado as well as poet as Alan knew quite well).

So Alan and Gabby have their moment and while Gabby wanted him to stay (and become a gas jockey, she a child of the American western night and practical as desert people must be as well of her mother’s flights of fancy Paris) he was bound to drift to find, well, like all of us with that searching hunger, to find something. And so he left, left to keep heading west in the company of a Mayfair swell, his wife and chauffer who offer him a ride after Gabby’s pleading when they stopped for gas.      

Then the story gets interesting, gets to feel like the “real” Old West. See the notorious Duke Mantee (played by a young Humphrey Bogart in his break-through role on film) and his gang of “take no prisoners” outlaws who have been shooting up the West had been rumored to be in the vicinity and not to disappoint a candid world Duke and the boys run into that Mayfair swell, his wife, chauffer, and Alan and commandeer their vehicle. Alan, seeing this as some kind of sign that he has found his life’s work, has found the spot in the universe where he belongs heads back to the gas station, and his fate.

Of course to set up the clash of civilizations, Alan’s effete world gone to seed once the world became too industrialized, too impersonal, too heedless of Mother Nature and Duke, the elemental human force who will take what he wants when he wants it and not give it a second thought, and will give no quarter and ask for none, they have to meet up at the café, have to do their dance of death in the dusty outback. Duke is holed up there waiting for his girl and the rest of the gang who had split up after the last caper. Alan and Gabby resume their little flirtation, although Alan sees that the best way to “court” Gabby is to see that she has the wherewithal to get to Paris and her dreams. So he makes a deal with the devil, with Duke, after signing over his life-insurance policy with Gabby as the beneficiary. When Duke and the boys lam it out of the cafe Duke is to plug Alan. And Alan is serious. After the local posse gets wind that Duke is holed up in the café and there is a shoot-out Duke does exactly that to Alan. Leaving him in the arms of Gabby, Gabby reciting our brother outlaw Villon about how such deeds as Alan has done lead to new beginning for somebody.   Of course the grabbing, grasping, cutthroat Duke also gets taken down by that posse. But Alan death is the one that counts here, Alan’s “useless” intellectual in retreat.