The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the cinema's great adventure stories, remembered now - if it's remembered at all - for two oft-misquoted lines: "We don't need no stinking badges," and "Could you spare a dime for a fellow American who's down on his luck." I've lamented before on this blog how I think it's sad that so many people today have never seen these classic films and most probably wouldn't appreciate them if they did see them. That this movie could have been reduced to a couple of quotes is a prime example of that. There is so much more to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre than could possibly be summed up by two lines. This movie is filled with adventure, with romance, with desperation, with greed, with madness, with deceit, with kindness, with generosity, with murder, with life. It is, in short, a picture of the world as we know it today, a picture of life in the post-modern world encapsulated into a two-hour-long strip of celluloid that contains the story of three down-and-out men hoping to strike it rich searching for gold in Old Mexico. Gold they find, and all that comes with it. As Dan Fogleburg once wrote, "Balance the cost of the soul you've lost and the dreams you lightly sold, and tell me if you're free from the power of gold."

Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is drifting around Tampico, Mexico, when he runs into Bob Curtin (Tim Holt). The two take a job working on an oil rig, but the boss tries to get away without paying them. This leads to a brutal fist fight between Dobbs, Curtin and their boss. They beat him senseless and take what's owed them, but soon the money runs out and they're destitute again. One night, in a flop house, Dobbs and Curtin meet an old prospector named Howard (Walter Huston). He knows of a gold vein ripe for the taking, but he needs partners to help him get it. Dobbs and Curtin sign on for the job. Before long they are heading up into the Sierra Madre with pack mules laden with tools and supplies. After weeks of trudging across deserts and through jungles, they finally reach the place they're looking for. They build a sluice and start digging. Sure enough, they find gold. Soon the bags start filling up with gold dust, and their minds start filling up with suspicion. Dobbs is the worst. He becomes convinced that everyone is out to take his share from him. He even threatens to kill Curtin on more than one occasion. Into the middle of this powder keg stumbles Cody (Bruce Bennett), another American looking to find his fortune digging for gold in Mexico. He wants to join our trio. Howard and Curtin don't mind. They think there's enough for everyone. Dobbs doesn't agree. He wants to kill Cody. As they're arguing this out, all four of them are set upon by bandits. After some tense negotiating, in which the infamous line is quoted, a gunfight breaks out. The bandits are routed, but Cody is killed in the battle. They bury him, and Curtin says he's going to give some of his gold to Cody's widow back in the Texas. Howard decides to also. But not Dobbs. As they pack up and head back toward civilization, Dobbs descends deeper and deeper into madness. When Howard turns aside to save the life of an injured boy, Dobbs attacks Curtin and runs off with all of the mules and the gold. Unfortunately, he runs right into the arms of the bandits they had run off. On his own now, Dobbs is outnumbered. The bandits make quick work of him. Then they steel his boots, his guns and his mules. Foolishly, they mistake the gold for sand, which they pour out on the ground. Curtin finds Howard, and the two of them go after Dobbs. All they find, however, is his corpse. The gold dust blew away in a sand storm.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the finest films that either John Huston or Humphrey Bogart ever made. Bogart is at his best as the lunatic Dobbs. It's fascinating to watch how he begins to unravel, how little things begin to wear on him, how he becomes increasingly suspicious of every move, every gesture made by his partners, until he finally cracks. Bogart would play another neurotic - Capt. Queeg - six years later in The Caine Mutiny, but Dobbs is a much more interesting character than Queeg. Queeg is slightly nuts to begin with, so his break isn't unexpected. In Treasure, Bogart must take the apparently sane Dobbs down into his madness by slow degrees. He does a job with it too. We feel the tension ratcheting up as Dobbs slips ever further into his paranoia. When the break comes, it's almost a relief. Walter Huston (the director's brother) plays Howard as the elder statesmen of the desert. He's the voice of reason, wisdom personified, seldom getting angry, always dealing with the mishaps with a serenity that drives Dobbs mad. Howard has seen every side of men, and nothing they do surprises him. Gold does not drive him mad. It only seems to make him more generous towards the failings of Dobbs and Curtin. Tim Holt usually played nice guys in Hollywood, and Curtin is no exception. He's Dobbs' foil, always looking for the good in things and people. If Dobbs suspects everyone of trying to cheat them, Curtin never really does. In the end, even his anger at Dobbs' treachery is assuaged at the thought of doing something good for someone else. John Huston even makes a cameo appearance in the film, in true Hitchcockian style, as the American businessman that Dobbs keeps hitting up for money on the streets of Tampico. It's a rare light moment in an otherwise deadly serious film.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is rated G and is filmed in luscious black and white.