The Petrified Forest (Archie Mayo, 1936)

The Petrified Forest (Archie Mayo, 1936)

Cast: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Genevieve Tobin, Dick Foran, Porter Hall, Charley Grapewin, Joe Sawyer, Paul Harvey. Eddie Acuff, Adrian Morris, Nina Campana, Slim Thompson, John Alexander. Screenplay: Charles Kenyon, Delmer Daves, based on a play by Robert E. Sherwood. Cinematography: Sol Polito. Art direction: John Hughes. Film editing: Owen Marks. Music: Bernhard Kaun. 

Robert E. Sherwood was once America's pre-eminent playwright, winning three Pulitzer Prizes for drama (plus one for a biography of FDR's relationship with Harry Hopkins). But his plays are rarely revived today, and The Petrified Forest shows why: It's talky and its characters are more vehicles for ideas than human beings. The protagonist, Alan Squier, wears the label Effete Intellectual like a badge of honor. The leading lady, Gabrielle Maple, is the Wide-Eyed Naïf. The villain, Duke Mantee, is all Animalistic Evil. The actors who play them in the film -- Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and Humphrey Bogart, respectively -- do what they can to bring them to life, but they still have to speak Sherwood's lines, or the equivalents provided by screenwriters Charles Kenyon and Delmer Daves. Sometimes the dialogue consists of things no human being ever found the way to utter: "The trouble with me, Gabrielle, is I, I belong to a vanishing race. I'm one of the intellectuals.... Brains without purpose. Noise without sound, shape without substance." Howard makes what he can of this self-pitying poseur, but who sheds a tear when he gets his comeuppance? Bogart, who was in the original Broadway production along with Howard, fares a little better: All Duke Mantee has to do is snarl and growl his lines. It's not prime Bogart, who learned to give a little more depth to his bad guys, but it gave his career a boost after Howard insisted that Bogart be cast in the role instead of the then better-known Edward G. Robinson. Davis comes off best, especially when you remember that her previous teaming with Howard was in John Cromwell's 1936 Of Human Bondage as the slutty Mildred, a character 180 degrees away from the dewy-eyed hopeful Gabrielle. The rest of the cast is entertaining, though Charley Grapewin's gramps, a garrulous old foof who can't help telling tale tales about his encounter with Billy the Kid, gets a little grating after a while. The cast also includes two African-Americans, Slim Thompson as the wealthy couple's chauffeur and John Alexander as a member of Mantee's gang. They are not stereotyped, and they have a brief moment of interaction in which the gangster lords it over the chauffeur, one of the few moments in which the reality of black life in America surfaces convincingly in a mainstream mostly white movie of the era. 

Dark Passage (Delmer Daves, 1947)

Houseley Stevenson and Tom D'Andrea in Dark Passage

Vincent Parry: Humphrey Bogart
Irene Jansen: Lauren Bacall
Madge Rapf: Agnes Moorehead
Bob: Bruce Bennett
Sam: Tom D'Andrea
Dr. Walter Coley: Houseley Stevenson
Baker: Clifton Young
George Fellsinger: Rory Mallinson

Director: Delmer Daves
Screenplay: Delmer Daves
Based on a novel by David Goodis
Cinematography: Sidney Hickox
Art direction: Charles H. Clarke
Film editing: David Weisbart
Music: Franz Waxman

Time doesn't just heal wounds, it also makes bad movies into interesting ones. Dark Passage is, on the face of it, a bad movie, a silly thriller whose plot depends on a series of absurd coincidences. But it has survived and achieved almost cult status because of several things: the eternal chemistry of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and its wonderful views of San Francisco in the late 1940s among them. And, I think, because writer-director Delmer Daves knew enough to take its absurdities with a straight face, keeping his tongue only slightly in his cheek as he unspools the story of convicted wife-murderer Vincent Parry, who manages to escape from San Quentin in an open barrel precariously perched on the back of a truck, to survive a barrel roll from the truck on Highway 1, to be picked up first by a guy we later learn is an ex-con who had done time in San Quentin and then by Irene Jansen, who is convinced that Parry is innocent. She takes him to her handsome apartment -- an Art Deco building at 1360 Montgomery St. that still attracts movie-loving tourists -- and gives him shelter, even though she's also friends with Madge Rapf, who testified against Parry at the trial. Leaving the safety of Irene's apartment, he hails a cabbie named Sam, who recognizes him but believes he's innocent, and who takes him to a back-alley plastic surgeon who -- for $200! -- gives him a new face. And so on. Much of the first part of the film is done with a subjective camera, giving us Parry's view of things, including the film's best -- that is, funniest -- scene: the doctor explaining the procedure as Sam kibitzes over his shoulder. His face bandaged, Parry returns to Irene, who nurses him until the bandages come off and we see Bogart's face for the first time -- though even with bandages on, he's identifiably Bogart. And so on as Parry gathers evidence that proves the real murderer was Madge, who inconveniently takes a header through a plate-glass window, robbing him of his proof. Pauline Kael was representative of the earlier response to the movie, calling it "miserably plotted" and "an almost total drag," but if you have an easily willing suspension of disbelief, a taste for old-style star chemistry, and an interest in seeing the Golden Gate Bridge without bumper-to-bumper traffic, Dark Passage can be a lot of fun.

Dames (Ray Enright, Busby Berkeley, 1934)

Mabel Anderson: Joan Blondell
Jimmy Higgens: Dick Powell
Barbara Hemingway: Ruby Keeler
Mathilda Hemingway: Zasu Pitts
Horace Hemingway: Guy Kibbee
Ezra Ounce: Hugh Herbert
Bulger: Arthur Vinton

Director: Ray Enright, Busby Berkeley
Screenplay: Delmer Daves, Robert Lord
Cinematography: George Barnes, Sidney Hickox, Sol Polito
Art direction: Robert M. Haas, Willy Pogany
Film editing: Harold McLernon
Music: Heinz Roemheld

Utterly inane and completely delightful, Dames is mostly a showcase for three great Busby Berkeley dance spectacles, each giddier and more kaleidoscopic than the one that went before. The big numbers -- "The Girl at the Ironing Board," "I Only Have Eyes for You," and the title song -- are clustered at the end of the film, the supposed (if impossible) production numbers in a Broadway musical. Until we get to them, there's a lot of nonsense about multimillionaire Ezra Ounce's moral crusade and his cousin Horace Hemingway's kowtowing to Ounce in order to get a sizable chunk of his millions, which involves keeping his daughter, Barbara, from marrying her 13th cousin, Jimmy, who is banking on his ability to put on the big show, which supposedly offends Ounce's moral code. Got that? Fortunately, the bluenoses are played by such grand grotesques as Hugh Herbert, Guy Kibbee, and Zasu Pitts, and there's a lot of silliness about Ezra Ounce's hiccup cure, which is something like 70 percent alcohol. There's also the invaluable Joan Blondell as a chorus girl on the make. Unfortunately, we also get a couple of songs from Dick Powell, in his sappy tenor avatar, and some clunky tap-dancing from Ruby Keeler. But Berkeley's extravaganzas are worth the wait, including the title number, which features chorus girls riding a miniature Ferris wheel. Standing. Backward.