The Petrified Forest

The Petrified Forest (1936) is a Warner Bros. crime drama you can watch online on iFILM. Director Archie Mayo brought Robert Sherwood's hit Broadway play straight to the screen, keeping its original leads: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and Humphrey Bogart.

Drifting through the Arizona desert with empty pockets, idealist writer Alan Squier stops at a roadside diner run by a gruff old man named Maple. His daughter Gabrielle serves burgers and dreams of painting in Paris. The two fall into the kind of conversation that only happens between strangers with nothing to lose — then Duke Mantee shows up. A killer on the run from Oklahoma, Mantee traps everyone inside overnight while the roads fill with police.

Bogart's Mantee is the reason the film still lands. He plays a man of violence with a quiet, almost tired dignity — a performance that finally pulled him out of the supporting-villain circuit and set him on the path toward Casablanca and beyond. Stream The Petrified Forest (1936) online on iFILM.