More than ten years ago, listening to new element music such as "The Great Smoky Mountains" and "The Grand Canyon", I couldn't help but imagine a common scene: quiet night, bright moon in the sky, clear phantoms, boundless deserts and barren hills. The long and steep canyon, the suffocating stone forest. Several wild wolves howled in the air. The boundless loneliness of the earth coincides with the eternal insignificance of human beings.
Poetic illusions that form part of human life. The truth is the savage desert and the silent hunger and thirst. Water became the only survival problem. In 1936, Archie Mayo made "The Fossil Forest." A story that takes place far away in the heart of Arizona's Sandstone Wilderness (now Fossil Forest National Park). The story is based on a play by R. Sherwood. A drama is always just a test of an actor's acting skills.
Movies don't. Movies need all the resources that can be mobilized, all the successful building blocks associated with them. Actors are just one important part of it. Fossil forests, in the hands of the imaginative, are doomed to death. If it falls in the heart of a director like Archie Mayo, it will come alive. It is inevitable to find the quiet poetry from flying sand and rocks.
A frustrated writer named Allen, who wandered lightly from Europe to the United States, and traveled far into the center of the wilderness, seems to have reached the end of mankind. As dusk approached, he came to a tavern. The waitress, Gabriel, is a beautiful girl who loves poetry. Her dream is to return to her mother in France one day. She was already tired of her grandfather and father nagging all day long. Her only suitor is a young man working for her family. Life is boring.
Only the arrival of Allen changed this dead life and stirred her heart to go to Paris to study art. She recited to him poems by French poets. Show him her usual pictures. Speaking of the fossil forest she was in, she told him that it used to be a boundless ocean, then it became a boundless forest, and then it became a dry fossil forest. Before the two of them could finish their minds, the night came, and he had to go west again.
The drop-off car that Allen was carrying was intercepted by Duke, the leader of the gang, which prompted him to return to the tavern. The girl is heartbroken to lose him. But he came back to her side, which made her extremely happy. It's just that Duke's gang also arrived. The tense atmosphere, with the chattering old man, the rich man's wife, and the writer Allen, became at peace with laughter. It seems that a small reception is being held at the Bistro in the Fossil Forest. They talked about their beloved women and their secret thoughts. It was the farewell of life and the beginning of human nature.
When the girl was gone, Allen asked people only one thing, to have them sign a witness signature on a $5,000 insurance policy he carried with him, the only property in his life, and then asked Duke would give him a shot no matter what, to fulfill his idea that Gabriel could get the $5,000 insurance money to realize her dream of going to France. Duke is a ruthless but daring bandit leader. He has always been reluctant to face his request. In the end, he was forced to be helpless. In the gunfight on the run, he succeeded. When he was dying, the girl promised him that he would be buried in the fossil forest, because that was the destination of his life.
From this movie came two big Hollywood stars, one is Bette Davis and the other is Humphrey Bogart. Bette Davis has starred in movies such as "Dangerous" before, and then starred in movies such as "The Man in the Red Shirt" and won two Oscars for Best Actress. In 1950, she missed the best actress for her excellent performance in "Comet Beauty", which is regrettable. This film became a major turning point in Bogart's acting career, and then starred in films such as "The Hero of the World" and "The Falcon of Malta". And Leslie Howard, who plays the frustrated writer, is not as famous as the first two, but in this film, he interprets it with eloquence, cadence and poise.
The wandering writer, the ideal waitress, the complaining rich wife and the bandit leader who has nowhere to go are all the roles of the frustrated. It turns out that life is unsatisfactory nine times out of ten. Even so, all of them performed very movingly, bringing a "resurrection" of life to the dead fossil forest. The story should not have a bit of poetry, but through the interpretation of the characters in the story, it brings poetic reverie to people. In an atmosphere that should be tense, it presents a poetic imagination space and a real ideal possibility. This is beyond the control of ordinary creators. It requires a broad mind, profound literary quality and real poetic ideals to create such a classic movie. An unforgettable movie.
2009, 7, 8
Published in 2013-7-10 "Shenzhen Special Economic Zone News"
From the film critic collection "Invisible Movies" published by Haitian Publishing House
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