Old Movies....."The Petrified Forest" (1936)

So, I DVR'd this old movie when TCM showed it a few weeks ago and got around to watching it earlier in the week.  Based on a stage play by Robert Sherwood, the movie is the story of a John Dillinger-type gangster who descends upon a combination gas station / lunch counter in the Middle of Nowhere Arizona desert and holds the denizens of this establishment hostage as he attempts to lam in to the Mexican border.

It's no great shakes but I wanted to see this now 82 year old film it because it is often sited as the movie that was the breakout role for Humphrey Bogart.  He was 37 at the time and up until then was pretty much a bit player in a long string of B-movie gangster flicks that Warner Bros. was always cranking out back then.  He played the role of killer Duke Mantee in the stage play, that also starred Leslie Howard on Broadway.  When Warners decided to turn it into a movie, they had signed Howard to recreate his starring role and have Edward G. Robinson play the role of Mantee, but Howard insisted that they cast Bogart, or he wouldn't do the movie himself.

So, Bogie played Mantee with all the menace the role demanded, and went on to become a big star, or so the legend says.  You will note in the poster for the film above, Leslie Howard and Bette Davis received billing above the title, and Bogie was only the third billed actor below the title, yet today, "The Petrified Forest" is considered a classic "Bogart movie".

The revelation to me in the movie, though, was Bette Davis.  We all know and concede that Bette Davis was one of the great actresses of Hollywood history, but she has never been considered a great beauty as so many of her contemporaries were, but in this one I was struck by just how pretty, if not beautiful, the 28 year old Bette Davis was.

Like I said, it's no great shakes, The Grandstander gives it Two Stars at best, but it's worth seeing once just to catch two of Hollywood's all-time greats, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, early on in their careers.

"The Maltese Falcon"

This past Wednesday evening, we took in the special TCM/Fathom Events showing to John Huston's 1941 classic, "The Maltese Falcon", on a big screen at the Cinemark Theaters.

Having just re-read the book last month (for the first time in over forty years), I was truck by how closely the movie followed the Dashiell Hammett novel, both in plot continuity and dialog.  The screenplay was written by John Huston, and it was his purpose to follow the book as closely as possible.  Two movie versions (1931 and 1936) of the book had already been made and both were terrible.  Huston saw the cinematic possibilities of the story as no one else had before him.  He convinced Warner Brothers to have him direct the movie. The result was a classic.  This was the first directing effort by Huston, who would go on to become one of Hollywood's great directors.  

The plot revolves around the recovery of jewel encrusted statue of a black bird, the Maltese Falcon, but as is often the case in such movies, plot is secondary to the acting, the setting, the dialog, and the mood created by the filmmakers.  And it is an important movie in that it rescued actor Humphrey Bogart from what had been a career of mediocre roles. The part of Sam Spade set the stage for the many great roles that followed for him in movies such as Casablanca, The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, Key Largo, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and The African Queen.  "The Maltese Falcon" is also considered the first example of film noir in America, and, as such, it established the standard for so many movies of this nature in the years ahead.

Also, consider the part of Casper Gutman played by Sydney Greenstreet.  Greenstreet, a stage actor, was 62 years old at the time and this was his first movie role, and he was terrific, getting an Oscar nomination for his efforts.

Just a fabulous movie, and a great experience seeing it in a theater on a big screen.  Incidentally, mark your calendars for April when TCM/Fathom Events will be showing the great "On The Waterfront" as part of this series.

For a final, and more scholarly, and no doubt better written, treatise on "The Maltese Falcon", I give you to this piece written by the late film critic Roger Ebert in 2001.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-maltese-falcon-1941

DVR Alert for Thursday: "The Big Sleep"

Fire up your DVR's (or take a day off work) for this coming Thursday, March 8 at 11:00 AM (Eastern). Turner Classic Movies will be showing "The Big Sleep" (1946) directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. This is based on the Raymond Chandler novel with Bogey playing private eye Phillip Marlowe.

Don't wrack your brain trying to figure out who did what to whom in this one. When Hawks and the screenwriters consulted with Chandler as they were making this movie, even he, Chandler, couldn't unravel all twists in the storyline. The real fun is in the journey here with the colorful characters and rich dialog as this one plays out.

A classic and a really fun movie to watch.