The Essential Films: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

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. 

"The life of men among men:" Reflections on "Reflections in a Golden Eye"

1967 was a taboo breaking year for Hollywood movies. Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and The Graduate challenged the traditional portrayals of violence, sexuality and race in movies. Sidney Poitier slapped a racist white man and dated a white girl, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were shown brutally shot down, and college graduate Benjamin Braddock had an affair with an older married woman. As the 60s were leading in to the 70s, Hollywood was changing forever. 

John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye, while not as well received then (and even now) still belongs that company due to its portrayal of a suppressed gay man on an army base. This is Major Weldon Penderton (Marlon Brando), who has a fraught marriage to Lenora (Elizabeth Taylor). Lenora is being unknowingly stalked by a young soldier named Williams (Robert Forster in his film debut). Penderton begins to grow attracted to Williams, without knowing Williams' fascination with Lenora. Lenora is also having an affair with Lieutenant Colonel Morris Langdon (Brian Keith), whose wife Alison (Julie Harris) suffers from depression due to a miscarriage, staying inside with only her servant Anacleto (Zorro David) as a companion.

Many of Huston's films were adaptations of novels, short stories, or in the case of Key Largo, a play. Reflections in a Golden Eye came from the pen of Carson McCullers, author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940). Originally published in two parts in  Harpers' Bazaar and then as a novel,  Reflections in a Golden Eye was her follow up novel. Like William Faulkner McCullers' work is categorized as southern gothic. Huston's film exists in a heightened and unusual reality, which is accentuated by Huston's choice for the film to have a golden hue. After a week in theatres, Warner Bros. took the film and removed the golden hue, re-releasing  the film in a normal colour version. The new Warner Bros. blu ray contains both versions. Many of the film's images feel like they could come from a dream, a memory or something in between. 

Huston's films were often very masculine but also about the vulnerability underneath the bravado. Think of Humphrey Bogart in his most iconic roles under Huston's direction, Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Spade falls for the femme fatale who he has to send to prison. Dobbs becomes sick with greed. And while Brando and Bogart have differing acting styles they're similar in being unconventional leading men. Bogart lisped and had a hard, occasionally sinister look. Brando mumbled and lacked the polish of more traditional male actors at the time. And underneath both Bogart and Brando's swagger lied a sensitive nature.

Reflections in a Golden Eye finds Brando- as Penderton- struggling with the ideas of masculinity and  leadership. Pernderton questions his sexuality. He hates himself for his feelings, which undermines his ability to be a leader. As he says in his speech to his students, "Leadership must include a measure of inherent ability to control...uh...and direct self-confidence." Penderton knows he lacks these things despite his rank. He doesn't even have Lenora's respect. Penderton beats her beloved horse due to  being thrown off by it.  Lenora confronts Penderton at that night's party and hits him with a riding crop. Earlier in the film she taunts Penderton and strips naked in front of him. 

Penderton is almost like Othello if he was more interested in Michael Cassio than Desdemona. But unlike Shakespeare's play this is more a slow-burn to tragedy. The film does have what could be called a leisurely pace, examining the day-to-day lives of the people on the base and how they all interweave. The first line of McCullers' novel reads "An army post in peacetime is a dull place," which is accurate to the story's slow pace but also ironic given what happens by the film's end. I'll admit, I struggled with the film's pace and wish it had focused more on Brando and Taylor. I've talked quite a bit about Penderton but he kind of drifts in to the background during the film. 

While watching the film I responded more to the direction and atmosphere but Penderton and Brando's performance are the most substantial character stuff in the film. Taylor is having fun as Lenora; coming off her Oscar winning performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, she's playing a more voluptuous and lighter take on Martha. Harris, as in one of my favourite horror movies The Haunting (1963), is adept at portraying fragility without overly invoking pity. Forster gives a practically silent performance, making his voyeuristic nature even creepier.

While the reviews for the film, outside Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, were mixed, Huston considered this one of his favourite among his films. Satisfaction is maybe all that matters when you're an artist. It's an off-beat in Huston's career, one I don't think is completely successful due to its pacing and sometimes thin characterization outside of Penderton. But it's worth seeing for its direction and unique look and feel, along with Brando and Taylor's performances.

Noirvember: Even Criminals Have Dreams, or: The Maltese MacGuffin: An Essay on John Huston's "The Maltese Falcon"

Alfred Hitchcock once gave a lecture where he described the term MacGuffin: [W]e have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin'. It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers." Later, in an interview with the director Francois Trauffaut, he illustrated the concept of the MacGuffin with a story:

"It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?", and the other answers, "Oh, that's a McGuffin". The first one asks "What's a McGuffin?" "Well", the other man says, "It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands". The first man says, "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands", and the other one answers, "Well, then that's no McGuffin!" So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all."

Basically, a MacGuffin is what drives a story forward, something that everyone wants- but doesn't really matter what that is. The most famous MacGuffin, I would argue, is the Maltese Falcon, the object at the heart of John Huston's 1941 film, The Maltese Falcon. A jewel encrusted statue of a falcon, it was made by the Knight Templars of Malta to pay tribute to Charles V of Spain, but on its voyage across sea, pirates stole it, and, like Mr. Burns' teddy bear, it has travelled around the world for more than 300 years. Private detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) gets caught up with the criminals looking for it, headed by Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet). What's great about the Maltese Falcon, the object I mean, is that it transcends the usual definition of the MacGuffin, something arbritrary, and becomes important in defining the psychology of the villains of the film, particularly Gutman. The Falcon is part of the film's thematic concerns with obsession, history repeating itself, as well as fate, since it was made before any of the characters in this film were born, setting in motion of the events of the film. The idea of fate and of people being doomed from the outset is integral to the film noir universe.

The film, while shown through the perspective of Sam Spade, is at its heart the quietly tragic tale of a man obsessed with finding the Falcon, chasing a dream that's always just of out reach. As the title of this essay suggests, even criminals have dreams. Gutman tells Spade how he almost had the Falcon when a Greek dealer discovered it in a shop in 1923. Gutman went to find this dealer, only to discover he had been murdered and the Falcon stolen. "If I'd only known a few days sooner," Gutman sighs, and you can feel his disappointment and regret. For anyone who's almost had something that was still out of reach, even if it was something small, this is a painfully resonant moment.

At the end of the film, Gutman finally gets the Falcon, after it comes in by ship, but it turns out to be fake. At first he's speechless, and even more stressed out by his associate Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) calling him a stupid fat idiot and crying. Gutman then tells Cairo there's no point in calling each other names and being upset. They continue on their journey in surprisingly high spirits. While re-watching the film, it struck me that maybe the chase is more rewarding than the actual prize, even if Gutman doesn't realize it. What would he do with the rest of his life if he found it? History repeats itself, with Gutman and Cairo continuing to pursue the Falcon, possibly running in to another Spade like figure. That may be Gutman's ultimate fate, in search of something he'll never have.

But for Brigid O'Shaughnessy, (Mary Astor) the hunt for the Falcon leads her to prison. Sam discovers that she killed his partner Miles Archer and decides to hand her over to the police. How we view Brigid is a complicated matter. Do we sympathize with her or are we annoyed and disgusted at her constant lying?  I feel it's a little bit of both. Sam is pretty ruthless in sending her over, telling her if she gets out in 20 years he'll be waiting and if she's hung, he'll always remember her. Any dreams she had of a better life, a life with Sam maybe, are down the drain. At the same time, Brigid's constant lies are pretty exhausting and she could've come clean earlier, or, here's a thought, not killed Miles at all. There was no real reason for her to kill him, except for trying to fram her accomplice Floyd Thursby. Sam also makes a good point when he says if he lets Brigid slide, she'll have stuff on him she'll be able to use whenever she wishes, and vice versa, which may lead to her killing Sam. That's not exactly a healthy relationship. Ultimately, the situation is tragic for both of them, since, as Sam says, maybe they do love each other. Sam watches as Brigid is taken by the police in to an elevator, creating a metaphoric image of her behind bars.

The villain I sympahize most with in the film is Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.), Gutman's gun man. He's just a kid and when Sam is trying to set him up as a fall guy, you see that Wilmer is on the verge of crying. I find myself actually wanting Wilmer to knock Sam out. I think this is because if I was Wilmer, I'd be in the same situation, being patronized and bullied by someone like Sam. Sam is kind of a bully in this film, whether it'd be "riding" Wilmer or beating up Cairo due to his "effiminate" nature. Spade also doesn't seem to care that his partner got murdered, kissing his widow the first chance he gets. In many ways, Sam is the least sympathethic character in the whole film.Though at the end of the film, he does show some nobility by saying that he even though he didn't like Miles, he was his partner and he deserves justice. Ultimately, Sam, while maybe not always the nicest guy, does remind of he is the hero of the film, even though he's an anti-hero.    

This was director John Huston's first film, and what impresses me most about the film is how Huston composes his shots, allowing us to see multiple actors in a single frame and seeing their body language. While the film's visual style is subtle, it's also quite dynamic. In the first scene, we Spade and Miles over Brigid's shoulder, highlighting them as an audience for Brigid's vulnerable girl act, which they like, even though they don't know Brigid's act hides darker intentions. Cairo's introduction is jarring, in a good way, when he's immediately standing over Spade's desk after Spade's secretary calls him in. It's startling and unnerving, showing how far down the rabbit role Spade is actually going.

The climax of the film, which is mostly exposition, and taking place in Spade's apartment, is a feat of staging as well as acting. Greenstreet is marvelous at delivering exposition while giving a sense of Gutman's personality. Huston also knows how to effectively isolate his actors in different parts of the frame. They're an audience for each other.  

The Maltese Falcon, like all film noirs, is very stylized, in its look and dialouge, and like those film noirs, reveals more depth on closer inspection. It's about the moral choices that define our futures, but also about how no choice is completely moral.