The Petrified Forest
Director: Archie Mayo
Year Released: 1936
Rating: 3.5
Criminal on the lam (Humphrey Bogart, in a legendary role) holds up several people in a gas station restaurant in Arizona - two of the people under his gun are failed writer Leslie Howard and a waitress who dreams of Paris (Bette Davis). It is a little too taken with its own philosophy, but that doesn't discredit it - the underlying concept is that there's really no room for individuals any more, that the mindless conformists (note how the football player is just 'a number') have more or less taken over, and that sacrificing your own life to better someone else's is honorable. The performances are quite stunning, too, and all deliver their loaded lines gracefully.
