Chicken Bone Cinema
Susan Bono sbono@tiny-lights.com Classic Movie Night at the Moose lodge is now called Chicken Bone Cinema, which only adds to its appeal, don’t you think? At a screening of the 1936 movie, “The Petrified Forest” with Leslie Howard, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart the other night, I got to thinking about how things really haven’t changed much in 70 years. Sure, back then, you could get coffee and pie for 20 cents and tipping your waitress could be considered un-American. But you still heard people complaining about the unemployment rate and the government’s inability to curb reckless violence in our cities’ streets. You still had young girls who didn’t know the power of their own beauty and men who didn’t know they were idiots. Movie dialog might have been more flowery in those days, and gore non-existent, but you could still find yourself stuck in the middle of nowhere. You could still believe you’d run out of options. You could still fall in love anyway.
It was a revelation, really, to see how the part played by Bette Davis before those famous eyes brought to mind a basset hound, would have been perfect for Scarlett Johansson or Charlize Theron. That one of the gangsters was the Depression-era twin of Snoop Dog. And here was the Humphrey Bogart Nicholas Cage must have tried to copy in “Moonstruck,” down to his rigidly clenched elbows and hands. I could have almost forgotten it was an old movie, except it only lasted about 90 minutes.
It’s been said there are only two story plots—a man goes on a journey or a stranger rides into town. “The Petrified Forest” makes use of both storylines when a roomful of travelers accidentally meet at a last chance gas and diner in the Arizona desert. Last chance is right! What happens next is the stuff audiences will probably be watching 70 years from now—plenty of humor, tension, romance and gunfire, with maybe a little assisted suicide thrown in. |
