化石森林 The Petrified Forest(1936)
简介：
- 失意的作家阿伦无目的四处流浪，直至结识了酒馆女招待加布里埃尔，匪徒杜克闯入酒店并抓了客人和招待作为人质。为了能让加布里埃尔离开这里去法国学习，阿伦被杀。
演员：
影评：
只是单纯地想安利一下莱斯利霍华德（Leslie Howard）这个演员。 莱斯利霍华德1893年4月3日出生于英国伦敦，父亲是匈牙利人，母亲则来自英格兰。他最为后人所熟知的角色恐怕当属《乱世佳人》中的Ashley Wilkes。1943年，他所乘坐的飞机在比斯开湾被德军当成丘吉尔的飞机而击落，他和妻子的遗骸下落不明。后被人爆出这个大红大紫的影星竟然是英国间谍，曾说服弗朗哥将军阻止西班牙参加二战。 他热爱戏剧，曾这么描述过自己对戏剧的看法：“Any actor hates to leave the stage, for there he is supreme, the most important individual.” 而对于表演，他则说：“I can`t think of anything more exciting than trying to be an actor.” 就算你从未看过莱斯利霍华德的任何一部影片，你也会不经意间通过其他明星得知他的名字，比如通过亨弗莱鲍嘉——为了感谢霍华德在《化石森林》里对自己的提携鲍嘉给自己女儿取名为Leslie，又或是张国荣——选Leslie作为自己的英文名，就是因为他对这个英国演员的喜爱。 他的表演相对内敛，你很少能见到他在影片中大喊大叫、挤眉弄眼的样子。和众多好演员一样，细微的眼神变化基本就能表达出他的所有情感。在《化石森林》里，当他讽刺鲍嘉饰演的强盗是“粗野的自我主义最后的信徒”时，他在微微眯起的双眼里微妙地隐藏了一丝不屑。而《人性的枷锁》中，当被心爱的女子嘲笑为坡子时，单是一个闭上双眼的动作就足以让观众心碎。 纵观他的演艺生涯，他饰演的大多数角色都是敏感、神经质又文艺兮兮的知识分子。看看他的柔和的相貌和举手投足间流露出的温文尔雅的气质，你也不得不承认，这类角色非他莫属。 这种风格的演员在那个年代的好莱坞可谓独出一格。至少，我暂时找不到第二个和他气质相近的演员。
你出生的一百年后我来迟了
飞机毁了，玫瑰碎了
比斯开湾全是泪水
我到化石森林寻你
你叼着烟斗
孩童般笑着
尾戒两只，两份优雅
我摘下尾戒给你看
刻着你的名
不要再流浪了
流浪也请带着我
我买了很多本诗集
一首首读给你听
瘦削长脸，优雅迷人
间谍身份，增添了你的神秘。英年早逝，一份心痛的爱后记：希望能够在二十年内观看到莱斯利霍华德的传记电影。这是一个可爱的人，战争应该为他的死道歉。我会永远爱他。
- 以前《看电影》推荐华纳匪帮电影的榜单中就有这部，严格的说，这不是一部gangster film，而作为社会题材、心理题材或者爱情片推荐都可以。片头的背景一看就知是摄影棚效果，拙劣的让人想起邵氏片场。男主角应该代表的是一种主义，这个主义是什么，我也说不上来，值得去研究。在酒馆内的剧情中，他控制住了全场，而不是博加特，在他面前，博加特更像是个心灵脆弱的小孩。
这部片子还昭示了台词功力对于演员的重要性，舞台剧的魅力也是靠这个建立起来的，一个好的演员要有讲述台词的独特能力，以动听的嗓音和应有的方式。例如本片开头将近30min都是男女主角之间的讨论，如果没有富有魅力的嗓音和优美的台词，这一切都会让人感到厌倦。 
With most of its action confined in a lonesome diner in the boondocks of Arizona, Archie Mayo’s THE PETRIFIED FOREST knuckles down to fall in line with Robert E. Sherwood’s original play’s progressive ideology, melding continental intellectualism with the desert’s down-home patriotism, the result is exceptionally engaging and poignant.
The wandering soul in the person of a dapper Alan Squier (Howard) fetches up in the diner and immediately attracts the attention of Gabrielle (Davis), the daughter of the proprietor Jason Maple (Hall). Their meet-cute is preceded by Gabrielle’s lackadaisical fending-off the petulant courtship from Boze (Foran), a former football player who becomes the diner’s employee, the all-American jock type that doesn’t deserve a pretty young girl who reads François Villon and has French in her blood.
Gabrielle is a painter and aspires to go to Paris to pursue her vocation if she has enough dole, and Alan, happens to be a writer manqué, world-weary and looks for a purpose to live and die for, their mutual attraction is plain as day, but a penniless Alan has to evade Gabrielle’s affection, since he has nothing to offer, not until this unilateral conundrum is interceded by the advent of gangster Duke Mantee (Bogart) and his henchmen. Mantee is a cold-blooded killer on the lam, taking everyone in the diner as hostages, while awaits the arrival of his other cohorts, so that they can flee together by crossing the border to Mexico.
The sudden duress under gunpoint adds some thrills and chills initially, but the tension soon dissolves into semi-chumminess (Charley Grapewin’s Gramp Maple has a whale of time delivering jocose factoids like “a killer always holds his chin in”), characters are encouraged to give a piece of their mind that reflects a shifting mindset that is ultra-modern for its time, above all Alan’s erudite confession of the primacy of a woman’s status, a feminist manifesto out of a gentleman’s mouth. A riveting Bogart darts his gimlet eye like no one else before in his breakout role, thuggish, flinty, keeping the suspense until his last appearance on the screen, will he or won’t he execute Alan’s bold and unconventionally morbid proposition?
While a young Davis dazzles with a brilliant impression of dewy-eyed curiosity and perfervid infatuation, it is Leslie Howard, a classic, rakish silver-screen heart-throb, who holds court from stem to stern, magnifies Alan's urbane sophistication and ardent emotion, as a member of the vanishing race, the intellectuals, namby-pamby extraneously, gallant intrinsically. Despite his doomed fatality and sentimentality, he still harbors hope and magnanimity in humanity, in new generation represented by Gabrielle’s free-spirited creativity.
Howard, as the actor, is a sublime heart-stealer and heart-breaker, his Alan holds a distinction in underlying an unpopular, somehow romanticized, helplessly sensitive, almost fragile side of masculinity, which is a dying breed per se pursuant to screen presentation, particularly set athwart Bogart’s refractory toughness. Perhaps that is why, THE PETRIFIED FOREST can stand out from the crowds, and endure the test of time to flaunt its modernity and pathos to all comers.