A Series of Writings on Films that I feel are essential for film lovers, coupled with films that are personal to me. Spoilers for those you haven't seen the film
Director John Huston needed Humphrey Bogart, and Humphrey Bogart needed John Huston. By writing High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon (both 1941-he directed the latter, while Raoul Walsh directed the former), Huston took Bogart from supporting player to movie star. And Bogart would provide Huston (who was making his film debut with The Maltese Falcon) provided Huston with the perfect new kind of (anti) hero. Bogart and Huston would collaborate on four more movies, Across the Pacific (1942, directed first by Huston and then Vincent Sherman when Huston joined the United States Army Signal Corps), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo (both 1948), The African Queen (1951, for which Bogart won his Best Actor Oscar) and Beat the Devil (1953). Of these, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is perhaps their greatest collaboration, and maybe Huston's finest film overall. It won Huston two Oscars for writing and direction- and he directed his father Walter Huston to a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (he also directed Claire Trevor in Key Largo to a Best Supporting Actress Oscar). Bogart was not nominated (Laurence Olivier won Best Actor for Hamlet, which also won Best Picture.)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre sets itself up as an adventure film but eventually becomes a cautionary tale, a psychological horror film about the almost supernatural quality gold has to lead men in to madness and violence. This is one of the darkest films to come out of the Hollywood studio system, one that subverted the image of its star and in which he gives his greatest performances. It's also one of the first Hollywood films to shoot outside the USA (in in Tampico and Durango), providing a rugged authenticity to the story. This is the kind of film where you can smell the sweat and feel the dirt.
The opening shots quickly establish the film's themes of desperation. The first image is that of a poster with winning lottery numbers, the camera panning to a man's hand ripping up a losing ticket. We cut to Fred C. Dobbs' (Bogart) grizzled face.. Dobbs is in Tampico where he meets another American, Bob Curtin (Tim Holt), both of whom are hired by a man named Pat McCormick (Barton MacLane) to do some labor. When the job's done, McCormick flees without paying them. Dobbs and Curtin go to a flophouse for a night, where they meet prospector Howard (Walter Huston). The next day Dobbs and Curtin encounter McCormick, who pretends he's going to pay them later and then tries to escape. Dobbs and Curtin beat him up (in an effectively staged brawl) and they take what's owed them. They get the idea to prospect for gold, so they decide to get Howard to go along with them. At first, they don't have enough money to buy supplies but then Dobbs is told by a child from whom he bought a lottery ticket that he has the winning number. A great example of the script setting up something early and paying it off after you've forgotten about it. When Dobbs and Cody shake hands, solidifying their partnership, the camera shows their hand with Howard in the background, looking unsure, reminding us of what he said in when we first met him: "....the noble brotherhood will last but when the piles of gold begin to grow...that's when the trouble starts."
Dobbs doesn't believe gold inherently changes a man- he feels it all depends on the man. And he's right. but it will be Curtin who retain his sanity, while Dobbs quickly becomes paranoid and angry towards Curtin and Howard. But even Curtin has to make a hard choice when a fourth man named James Cody (Bruce Bennett) follows Curtin after he came to town for provisions. The other three have to decide whether to kill Cody or let him join. Curtin makes the call, reluctantly, to kill Cody. But all three are going to do it so the other two won'thave anything to use against the third man. Cody then alerts them to Mexican bandits, led by Gold Hat (Alfonso Bendoya) and during a shootout Cody is killed. The three find a letter on Cody from his widow, and it's the most painful part of the film, re-contexualizing how we may have felt about Cody, and reminding us these guys were going to make his wife a widow. These three men had the capability to kill another because he jeoparized their exploit. Gold can be pure but men can't.
Now, let's talk a little bit more about Bogart. He's one of the greatest of movie stars, one with an incredibly strong filmography. Throw a dart and you'll hit a classic. James Stewart and Cary Grant are the same. All three are in movies I just really like and they're amongst the first classic movie actors to which I was introduced. I'll also say they were underrated as actors. I think in general people underrate and undervalue movie star acting, not considering it "real acting" and an actor "playing themself." What many consider great acting is often the more showy, "give me an Oscar" kind of acting, which has its place, but the more effortless movie star acting that Bogart exemplified is arguably just as, or more effective. Yes, he was always Bogart, with the unmistakable nasally voice and wolfish grin- but watch him in The Maltese Falcon. Watch how he glides through that film, completely in control of what's happening, only pretending to lose his temper, only pretending to be corrupt. Now watch him here, quick to paranoia, desperate, and eventually psychotic. He starts out as Bogart but his image of a cool, collected person who will ultimately do the right thing is subverted. Along with Nicholas Ray's In A Lonely Place, this is the darkest Bogart goes psychologically.
Of course, it's not just a subversion but coincidentally a return to when Bogart was the villain in films. Bogart was perhaps the first character actor turned movie star, and is the are leading man who can genuinely look sinister. That wolfish grin never looked more, well wolfish, or more terrifying than here, with his dirty beard and face giving him a an animalistic look. Cinematographer Ted McCord (who also photographed The Sound of Music and East of Eden) makes Bogart look like the Wolf Man in shots that wouldn't be out of place in a horror film. The film does become a psychological horror film in one of the last stretches of the movie where Dobbs and Curtin are alone without Howard, who had previously saved an ill Mexican child and is now being called back to the village to be honored.
Walter Huston's Best Actor Supporting Oscar, a deserved win for his portrayal of Howard, giving him a slightly eccentric but wizened quality. He's a little bit weird you can tell he knows what's he doing. Huston was a Canadian actor who started on stage before appearing in movies when "talkies" took over. One of his earliest roles was the sinister, self-righteous missionary in the pre-code film Rain (1932), starring Joan Crawford. The Treasure of Sierra Madre would be one of Huston's final films, with his last being The Furies with Barbara Stanwyck (1950). Huston would die in 1950 at the age of 67, of an aortic aneurysm.
Tim Holt is the film's unsung performance, probably because Curtin is the blandest of the three main characters. But Holt right kind of likability and sincerity befitting of the character who's the heart of the film. We fear for him when he's alone with Dobbs but we remember how he made the call to kill Cody. Bogart is clearly no longer our hero, and the whole movie has set us up for this confrontation.
When Dobbs believes he has killed Curtin, he runs off and eventually runs in to the bandits. They kill him and mistake the bag of gold he had for sand. It is scattered, with the bandits taking the burros and s supplies. When Howard and Curtin find the empty bags and the gold scattered, all Howard can do is laugh, with Curtin eventually joining in. The whole movie has been a set up for a punchline to a cosmic joke- but it's not a bleak ending. Curtin sums up the situation pretty nicely when he remarks
"You know, the worst ain't so bad when it finally happens. Not half as bad as you figure it will be before it's happened. I'm no worse off than I was in Tampico. All I'm out is a couple hundred bucks when you come right down to it. Not very much compared to what Dobbsie lost."
Howard reminds Curtin of what he mentioned earlier in the film, of buying land and growing fruit. And he also tells Curtin to visit Cody's widow. So there's still a dream, and there's still decency in this world. And for Howard, who is has been invited to stary in the village, there's a home. And getting to live another day, perhaps that it is something, perhaps that's everything.
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