The Petrified Forest (1936)

This was certainly not what I was expecting.  I thought it would be like Key Largo, only with Bogart as the Edward G. Robinson role, but actually (as the poster reveals) it's not a Bogart film at all, it's a Leslie Howard (and to a lesser extent, very atypical Bette Davis) film.  And it's not a film about a gangster holding people hostage (although that does happen), it's a film about love, ennui and the search for meaning in a post WWI world.  Actually, it's more like Leaving Las Vegas.  We start with an unnamed man hitchhiking through the desert (and almost being bowled over by a giant tumbleweed) and then we cut to the setting of 95% of the movie (yes, it was a play first), a run down gas station slash cafe slash bar in the middle of nowhere.  The normal population of this location comprises the owner, Mr. Maple, a pompous, overtly patriotic veteran of WWI (although he only drove vehicles behind the lines), his father, "Gramp" (who reminds him of this fact), whom you might recognize from the Wizard of Oz

his daughter, Gabby, a be-bobby-socked, poetry-reading teen(?) (improbably played by Davis),

and ex-college-football-player running to fat gas pump assistant (who is sweet on Gabby) Boze  (and later we see the latina cook). After a short interlude when a pair who had declined to pick the hitchhiker up stop by for food and get to hear Gramp's story about being almost shot by Billy The Kid, the hitch hiker, failed writer Alan Squier (Howard) arrives.  And very quickly Gabby falls hard for him, and to his surprise, he (who claims to have been born in 1901, so is clearly a bit old and certainly too over-educated for her, but she has an absent French mother who sends her poetry) for her, as he sees in her the artistic soul that he perhaps lacks.  All through this romantic interlude we have been hearing updates about notorious killer Duke Mantee being on the run after a massacre in Oklahoma City, and it's no surprise when he finally shows up.  But actually, it's after Alan has already said his goodbyes to Gabby and hitched a ride with a rich banker and his discontented wife.  They are flagged down by Mantee (Bogie, of course) and his men who drive back towards the gas station.  While the banker, wife and black chauffeur stay behind trying to repair the car that Duke and his men abandoned, Alan worries (rightly) that they will menace Gabby and co. at the gas station, so sets off back towards it.  And so begins the part of the movie that I thought the whole of the movie would be.  But even this doesn't go the way I thought it would.  While Boze tries some heroics (and gets shot in the hand for his troubles), Alan is uninterested in this.  In fact, he appears not to be at all worried that Duke will hurt his friends (and, indeed, Duke is remarkably moral and upright: he won't stand for Alan telling Gramp that he should die soon, but he also ensures that Gramp (who is loving every minute of the standoff, and very keen for bloodshed to happen) doesn't get whisky after Gabby says he shouldn't), but instead asks Duke to kill him before he departs so that Gabby can have the $5,000 payoff from the life insurance policy (which, oddly, is one of the very few things he carries with him in his rucksack).  Nobody is sure of how to take this, but Duke is game.  Meanwhile, more people keep showing up: first the rich couple and chauffeur (whom Duke's black buddy "Slim" refers to as "my colored brother"), then Mr. Maple, who had left shortly before Duke arrived for his meeting with his war buddies, dressed up in their uniforms, along with the two buddies.  They bring news that the other car full of Duke's men, along with "a blonde" has been caught, and that she has squealed on him, and shortly after that a machine-gun-toting posse.  All hell breaks loose.  Will Gabby and Alan find happiness?  Will they survive the night?  You have to watch it and see.  It really is an amazing film, presumably because it was a shocking play.  It's totally Leslie Howard's show, and he is at his languid, soulful, sly best, a quietly tragic figure who doesn't take himself seriously enough to pity himself but who is lost in the world.

Bogie is serviceable as Duke Mantee, but his acting is crude at best, and he moves very strangely, with his hands out in front of him like a zombie half the time.  You can see the magnetism, though, of course.

 And Bette Davis is very affecting as, for once, an innocent.  The role would be better suited (fifteen or so years later, perhaps) for a Marilyn Monroe type, but Davis shows her range.  And some of the bit parts are great, in particular Genevieve Tobin as the disgruntled wife of the banker, and Joe Sawyer as Jackie, one of Mantee's hoods who finds Boze particularly amusing.  Check it out, but don't expect Key Largo.