Bette Davis always had a unique way of really making her character. Gabby Maple (Bette Davis) is a beautiful diner waitress with big dreams of moving to France to be an artist. She works with a football player named Nick (Eddie Acuff), who is taken with her. Gabby Maple makes a statement early on about always wanting to be free. Not married, not tied down. You can see that part of her means it, and the other part of her is begging to fall in love. An "intellectual" named Alan Squier (Leslie Howard) flies in and falls in love with complicated Gabrielle Maple, who falls in love with him, and within 10 minutes of the start of the movie you see the tension and drama of a classic love triangle. It doesn't last because Alan Squier is a wanderer with no money, and hitches a ride with a wealthy couple, Mr. and Mrs. Chisholm (Genevieve Tobin & Paul Harvey). The fact that Mr. Squier has no money seems only to make Gabby love him more! Gabby and Alan clearly adore one another. Each seems to be jealous of the other's life. There's a perfection about this movie that's hard to put into words. It's romantic in the word's native definition. Once Alan leaves, their car is hijacked by 3 gangsters who are on a killing spree. Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart) is the chief gangster. Humphrey Bogart's performance in this movie is fantastic. He's brought great depth to this character. He's not a heartless gangster, nor will he hesitate to kill you. He calls the women "ma'am" and you can clearly see his respect for them. As you also see his respect for the elderly in one moment where he chastises Alan for speaking poorly to Gabby's grandfather. Alan is a failed author with a failed marriage which he stole from his publisher. He remains that Gabby is the only one he's ever truly been in love with. Classic movies have a way of making a 5 minutes relationship seem like true love, despite the relationships they each had prior. The Petrified Forest is an example of this. It briefly discusses the meaning of life, and death. Death is glorified, and you see the deeper theme of a person being enlightened upon death.