Who would be the best actor to play a failed writer, a romantic dreamer? Yeah, Leslie Howard seems to be a nice choice... And what if we take this pretty and young Bette Davis (before she becomes the best villain in the story of cinema) and make her play a rebel girl that's longing for a new life far away from that dusty Arizona hole she lives in? Lastly we give Humphrey Bogart the role of a bloodthirsty gangster that walks like a bulldog... Now that we have the perfect cast we just have to write a simple film-noir script, full of humor and with some touches of poetry and romanticism. That's it, a 80 minutes long wonder.<br /><br />This is cinema, my friends. Quite a lesson of how to create characters and how to make a great movie with a few sets and with six or seven actors. "Petrified Forest" is 70 years old, but it'll remain magnificent for ever and ever.<br /><br />*My rate: 9/10