The Petrified Forest Streaming
Mercredi, août 25th, 2010 |
The Petrified Forest Streaming.
Movie Title: The Petrified Forest The Petrified Forest is available for streaming or downloading. |
I’ve had the advantage of seeing The Petrified Forest as a movie and on stage. Taking into account the fact that the stage production I saw wasn’t the greatest, I still think that the movie version captured the story better. The story is dated and clearly belongs in the time period it was made, but that works in the film. The performances also work. Leslie Howard, sort of a forgotten Thirties’ star these days, manages to make some difficult dialogue play well. Humphrey Bogart, in an early role as the young gangster, makes his character an interesting and sympathetic figure, despite not having many moments to really develop the character with dialogue. Bette Davis brings a lot of conviction to her role as the young, full of ideas waitress that Howard falls in love with. The Petrified Forest is a hostage drama, but it’s more than that. It looks at life, growth, love, and disillusionment. It presents a nice contrast of characters, since Howard and Bogart are both at the end of their roads, having gotten there in very different ways. Bearing in mind that the film/play was written for an audience in the Thirties, today’s movie fan will still find truths and entertainment in it.
What a difference 70 years make. In 1936 THE PETRIFIED FOREST offered theater goes the exciting prospect of the re-teaming of IN HUMAN BONDAGE’S costars Leslie Howard and Bette Davis. Today Howard is practically forgotten and Davis moved on to much more memorable roles. The reason eternity pays heed to this movie is because of the breakthrough performance of the actor who shows up fifth on the cast credits, after not only Howard and Davis but Genevieve Tobin and Dick Foran as well. Although the term is overused, Humphrey Bogart is electrifying as criminal Duke Mantee, and he steals the show and wrestles a movie career in the process. Howard was a world class actor, and I can’t remember another instance where Davis wasn’t the most interesting character on the screen. For a 30-something stage actor, and a more or less failed film star, to steal a film from these two heavyweights is a staggering achievement. For my money, Duke Mantee stands as one of Bogart’s best film performances ever.
Buy,Download, Or Stream The Petrified Forest! Click Here
The movie is based on Robert Sherwood’s hit Broadway play of the same name. Howard plays gentle roustabout Alan Squier, an esthete young man hitchhiking across America, `looking for something to believe in.’ The wind shakes him out of the even present dust and deposits him at the isolated Arizona diner young Gabrielle Maple (Bette Davis) runs with her father and grandfather. Davis plays the naïve and romantic and `gabby’ young girl stuck in the middle of nowhere who paints and dreams of reuniting with her mother in France and reads the poems of Francois Villon to take the stink of the hamburger and gasoline out of her system. The first act, and much of the second, is used to bud the romance between Alan and Gabby, all the while reminding us that brutal criminal Nick Mantee is on the loose and in the area.
Of course, Mantee finally arrives and Alan presciently announces that `carnage is imminent and I’m due to be among the fallen.’ Bogart, who modeled Mantee on real life criminal John Dillinger, then proceeds to lay claim to Hollywood immortality. With his heavy stubble and dark and haunted eyes and stooped shoulders Bogart looks like a hunted beast of a man. More a mono-syllabic killer than `the last great apostle of rugged individualism,’ as Alan puts it. Or, as Mantee would say, `Maybe you’re right, pal. I couldn’t say.’
THE PETRIFIED FOREST never quite shakes it stage heritage. Although commentator Eric Lax (Bogart biographer) tells us in his fact filled and entertaining commentary the tons of dust used on the soundstage, the film spends almost all of its time on one set - the interior of the diner - and the movie has a pretty static feeling to it as a result.
The print looks and sounds great, by the way. The dvd also has a 15- minute feature “Menace in the Desert”, in which film historian Alain Silver and others discuss the Robert Sherwood stage play, its conversion to the screen, and the role that set Humphrey Bogart’s star. Also included on the disk is the delightful and always welcome Warners Night at the Movie. It opens with a trailer for Bullets or Ballots, an Edgar G. Robinson crime thriller where he plays the good guy. That’s followed by “Rhymitis”, a dancing short with Hal LeRoy and Toby Wing. It doesn’t have much of a plot but it’s fun. A modern day alchemist comes up with a pill that makes you want to dance dance dance whenever you hear a beat that can’t be beat. Night at the Movies concludes with the color cartoon “The Coo Coo Nut Grove,” a take-off on the Coconut Grove nightclub and a lampoon of contemporary Hollywood stars - i.e., W.C. Fields as a pig, Katharine Hepburn a horse, etc.
Buy,Download, Or Stream The Petrified Forest! Click Here
Eliminate Credit Card Debts | Get Rid of Credit Card Debt Now | Credit Card Debt Consolidation
mafia wars hack | mafia wars strategy guide | mafia wars cheats
Watch NFL Football Games Online | Watch NFL Playoffs Online Live
mafia wars strategy guide | mafia wars hack | mafia wars cheats
Watch NFL Football Games Online | Watch NFL Playoffs Online Live