The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) - film review

In a small Mexican town in 1925, three down-at-heel gringos meet up and agree to work together to prospect for gold in the Sierra Madre mountains.   They take a train ride into the remote hinterlands, surviving an attack by ferocious bandits en route.  As they set about their task, the oldest member of the group, Howard, soon proves to be the most knowledgeable.  It is he who manages to find the gold they are seeking.  Once the mine has been dug, the prospectors can hardly believe the quantity of gold sitting in the ground, waiting to make them all rich men.  But greed soon sets in and the friendships rapidly begin to crumble.  Dobbs is determined to steal the entire treasure for himself and, as his sanity starts to disintegrate, he acquires a paranoid certainty that his associates intend to kill him..

Jack Warner, head of Warner Brothers, once remarked that The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was the finest film his studio ever made.  Other Huston/Bogart collaborations are acclaimed but this film deserves a place alongside The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca.  This place of excellence is certainly merited.  Bogart delivers his best performance and gives us one of cinema’s greatest characters.  Veteran actor Walter Huston also gives the finest performance of a long career.  His son, John, manages to create one of Hollywood’s most sublime character studies.

The film revolves around three poor Americans living in Tampico, Mexico, who try their luck at gold prospecting.  The main character in the early part of the film is Bogart’s everyman, Dobbs.  He soon befriends a younger fellow named Curtin, played by Tim Holt.  The two men go to work and decide to take a risk with their money.  They team up with a seemingly unhinged veteran prospector named Howard (Walter Huston) to find gold.  The film really begins to churn when the men do find gold.  The possibility of newfound wealth seemingly warps Dobbs into a paranoid and monomaniacal man.  Adding to the tension are brief appearances by natives, bandidos and intruders.

Huston does a masterful job in this adventure / drama / western.  The film’s slow pace creates a sense of palpable tension that builds until moments of explosion.  No scene feels wasted or unnecessary.  Each one adds something, either wholly new and important to the film or building on another theme.  It may at times seem threadbare or simplistic but that only turns more attention to the characters on the screen.  Huston gives every performer an opportunity to establish his characters and make something memorable.  Max Steiner does a solid job on the composing front, the opening score mirroring the film’s daunting themes.

While the contributions from Holt, Alfonso Bedoya as the chief bandit, and a young Robert Blake are enjoyable, the show belongs to Bogart and Huston, who are truly wonderful.  Huston’s rollicking performance is made memorable by his mixture of exuberance and solemn wisdom on screen.  He conveys the two sides of the grizzled old prospector so well that he brings plausibility to a potentially outrageous character.  Bogart’s performance is perhaps more laudable as he deals more subtly.  Dobbs is seemingly an average, hard living fellow down on his luck who becomes a monster.  The difficulty in Bogart’s job lay in his showing us Dobbs’s flaws without hamming up the part, whilst allowing the other actors time to shine.  When he is finally called on to reveal Dobbs’s madness, he does it perfectly.   Bogart gives an ordinary drunk an air as regal, powerful and haunting as Olivier’s Richard III.

The film’s themes are numerous: greed, conscience, experience, fate and the absurd.  Howard and Dobbs are the vessels through which these notions are revealed.  Fate intervenes in giving Dobbs the lottery ticket that was essential in helping him to raise the money for the expedition and it laughs at the vanishing gold at the film’s end.  These outcomes are at odds with the philosophies and actions of the controlling anti-hero Dobbs, whose fall from grace is slow but satisfying to watch.  Howard’s laughter and carefree personality seem to indicate a long acquaintance with the sad ironies of life that the young adventurers are destined to learn about.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a favourite among many much vaunted Hollywood triumphs.  Its timeless themes, powerful acting, and stout direction make it one of the big screen’s great morality stories, one that can truly be compared with Shakespeare’s tragedies.  Like all good plays, the film depends on artful storytelling and acting, which it has in abundance.  It is simply a masterpiece.

© Isaiah (New York, USA) 

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