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As one of the earliest films in this collection, Archie Mayo’s The Petrified Forest effectively captures the nascent transition to moral ambiguity that would define so much of the film noir cycle. Heroes and villains are still distinctly drawn in the Arizona gas station owned by Jason Maple (Porter Hall), his yappy father Gramp (Charlie Grapewin), and his ambitious daughter Gabrielle (Bette Davis), but the stereotypes so often depicted in earlier films are stretched to an occasional blur. The villain is Duke Manatee (Humphrey Bogart in his breakout role), a notorious gangster on the run from police, who holes up in the diner with his gang and holds its patrons hostage. The ostensible hero is Alan Squier (Leslie Howard), a writer and drifter heading to California who stops at the diner and falls for Gabrielle in a matter of minutes, ultimately offering up his life for her. Bogart’s cold, gruff animal nature clashes with Howard’s fey, Jung-carrying intellectual, but neither is a caricature; in fact, there seems to be mutual respect, maybe even admiration, as they are both alienated from the world in their own way. The diner’s isolation, combined with a nasty windstorm howling through most of the film, engenders the Old West (there’s even tumbleweed!) and its primitivism (“Nature is taking the world away from the intellectuals and giving it back to the apes”). With the help of an outstanding script by Charles Kenyon and budding director Delmer Daves, based on a play by Robert E. Sherwood, Davis and Howard portray smitten lovers like magnets, their rapport earnest and illuminating, making us root for them despite the expectation of swift tragedy.
