The Petrified Forest

Having just watched Humphrey Bogart's first major movie Petrified Forest, I must say it was riveting yet fanciful. The dialogue rolled like a stream with Leslie Howard and Betty Davis captivating the screen. Electric exchanges between Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart teetered on the absurd and the profound, augmented by a setting that both attracted and distracted. Most interesting that two of the characters were Black, cast not for PC but as real life people, one a criminal and the other a driver for the rich couple whom Bogart's gang has robbed of their car. The dialogue between the two Black actors was as important then as now. Drama at its best- as is often said, "they don't make them like they used to" really is appropriate for this movie. 1939 usually is cited as the year which produced the greatest American movies. Just say the 30's movies were special, and black and white movies, though some dislike them, were an art form never to be repeated. As with The Ox-Bow Incident and To Kill a Mockingbird, Petrified Forest would not have had the effect it did had it been in color. Why were those movies so special- perhaps because Hollywood knew what people wanted and would pay to see and perhaps that movie makers felt an obligation to use the new medium to say something, to be ART. Money was tight so for a movie to be popular and profitable, it had to be artistically done and produce an effect on audience. Today's movies are in the words of the Bard, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

No doubt television led to the demise of great American movies. The movies went from pure protein to pablum and then television came along and is little more than mental bubble gum. Televisions best use is sports. And now even sports are being molded by commercial breaks, ruined by talking heads, dreadfully unnecessary. And then there is the 'news'. The medium doesn't report the news, it chooses and creates news. And the news isn't really new, it is the same sad rehash of sorrow and human misery and evil brought to us from differing sites by roving maggots with production crews in tow. A death toll, a tearful replay by the unapologetically rude cameras and the half-educated on the spot reporters who use bad grammar and lack propriety. Nothing is sacred except the commercial break.

Critics, thinkers, intellectuals, faux philosophers and panel after panel of hired experts all infest the small screen which has become a big screen with small ideas and themes. Man playing with the bigness of his littleness (sorry e.e.). Sad to say that technology has had a detrimental effect on the quality of television and the quality of life. The multiplying villainies of improved technology and a lack of respect for the suffering and woe of human beings side by side. We were happier before television, perhaps in our ignorance, naive to the world, satisfied with our little lives, unaware of the vast suffering of strangers.

Now, television shows fester into movies which then multiply into sequels, the hydra-headed monster. There was a time when movies meant something, when there was art - no more. I've seen two movies at the theater this year, both dreadfully tedious and worthless. I admit there are still great movies being made but when measured against the number of releases, the great ones are merely the tip of an iceberg beneath which a monstrous collection of garbage rests.

Modern thinkers have long railed against the 'wasteland' of television some even and cite the TV shows of the 50's as being the classic or grand era of the medium. Was it? What is there on television that lifts us from the flat plane of our vapid, narrow world- almost nothing. Many have said commercials are the most carefully created things on TV- no doubt. What I often wonder about is effectiveness of commercials. Do they really work- not on me, well not that I know of that is.

I was born in a world that no longer exists and live in a world that no one could have anticipated. As a child I had no television and didn't begin watching it until I was nearly 10. For that I am truly grateful.

My apologies to the reader, as my pronouns have drifted from the impersonal voice of argumentation, I apologize for the invasion of the first person into this blog. It signifies that it is time to close today's entry. More to follow soon.