The Hollywood studio system was in its heyday in the thirties, and the Warner brothers ran their company like an assembly line, with as little money and time wasted as possible. Geared to producing a product on a regular basis, actors, actresses and directors were worked almost constantly: they were told what to do and when, or faced suspension. Tonight's two films, made just a year apart, provide an opportunity to compare two products of the “factory"--one a comedy and one a drama--both directed by Archie Mayo and starring Leslie Howard and Bette Davis.
Set almost entirely in a roadside cafe at the edge of the Arizona desert, the claustrophobic quarters of Petrified Forest, although stagy, reflect the personalities of the characters, each of whom feels life is closing in on him. Leslie Howard is a burnt-out intellectual, traveling across the U.S. in search of new meaning in his life; Bette Davis reads poetry and dreams of an “artistic life” far from her deadend restaurant job; Humphrey Bogart as Duke Mantee, killer on the run, is pursued by law and order. While Howard and Bogart are contrasted as brains vs. brawn, idealist vs. realist, they share a sense of desperation, of fatalistic doom. On the run from their own lives, they are more tied to the past than the future--petrified--unable to adapt and change. Only Davis with her dreams of a different future can act, and when she takes to the road she'll head for a new life, not run from an old one.