This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed (again!) and I have to review something.
(PG) ★★★★★
Director: John Huston
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett, Barton MacLane, Alfonso Bedoya.
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| "He who smelt it, dealt it, fella." |
"The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit."
So spaketh Gordon Gekko, a snake of a man with a lizard for a surname, in that most '80s of movies, Wall Street. Gekko (as played by Michael Douglas and written by Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser) obviously hadn't seen The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. Because the moral of that 1948 classic is that greed, for lack of a better word, is bad.
Of course it's not so clean cut as that, which is part of what makes Huston's gold-fever drama still an embarrassment of riches. Greed has the power to corrupt, yes, but only those who are corruptible. It is an internal war to wage, and this psychological battle of evil is played out to thrilling effect in the hearts and minds of three prospectors in 1920s Mexico.
The story is based on a novel written in 1927 by who the fuck knows (seriously no one knows the real identity of the guy that wrote this book, which is fascinating). John Huston took its story-within-a-story conceit, and extracted an Oscar-winning screenplay out of it, which also won him a best director's Oscar.
Huston knew he had something special from the get-go. He fought with Warner Bros to be allowed to shoot much of the film on location, and indeed the studio-bound stuff looks terrible by comparison, particularly the early scenes in Tampico, where the rear projection just doesn't cut it. But out in the dustbowl outback of Mexico (near Durango allegedly), the film rings true.
As Philip Kemp put it in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, "the film's texture exudes the dusty aridity of the Mexican landscape, so that watching it you can almost taste the grit between your teeth; and the actors, exiled from the comfortable environment of the studio and having to contend with the elements, were pushed into giving taut, edgy performances".
John Huston drew one of those very performances out of his dad Walter, earning the old man an Oscar in the process for his turn as Howard, the more experienced of the three gold diggers. Walter Huston helps create the stereotypical "grizzled prospector" with his mile-a-minute dialogue and his struck-it-rich happy dance, but he also serves as the moral compass of the film as much as he's the comedic relief. He brings a vaudevillian effortless to his lengthy monologues (including his asides in Spanish), but also a real heart to the role.
Bogart, who apparently described his character Fred C Dobbs as "the worst shit you ever saw", gives possibly the performance of his career (it's a line ball between this and Casablanca obviously, both of which are just ahead of The Maltese Falcon). "What they expected was Bogart, the movie star; what they got was Bogart, the actor," wrote Barry Norman in his entry on The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre in his book 100 Best Films Of The Century. Bogart chews the scenery, and embraces the madness, diving right off the deep end to give us an unlikely villain who looks like he's being literally consumed by the fires of hell at one point.
Huston and Bogart overshadow Curtin (played by largely forgotten B-Western star Tim Holt), though the third role is no less important in terms of the film's morality play. Dobbs is destined to go off the rails, it's just a matter of when. Howard has seen it all, including his fair share of Dobbses over the years. But Howard was also probably a young Curtin at some point - the man who could go either way. There's a fascinating moment where a mine collapse leaves Dobbs in mortal danger, and Curtin considers walking away and leaving him to die. It's a defining moment for the character, and one that highlights how important Curtin's progression and decisions are in the film, and how nicely Holt handles the role.
The legacy of The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre is strangely enduring, even as its position among the absolute classics seems to have waned. Back in 1976, the sixth edition of Leslie Halliwell's acclaimed Filmgoers Companion dismissed it as having "not worn well", and on the IMDb 250 its dropped from its 2007 peak of #48 to its current listing of #169. In the nine years between AFI lists it fell eight spots, and was a notable omission from Empire Magazine's Top 500 Films special edition of 2013.
But it pops up in interesting ways: Toy Story 2's Stinky Pete is an intriguing mix of Howard and Dobbs, it helped inspire the creation of Indiana Jones and the film There Will Be Blood, the "we don't need no stinking badges" line turns up in everything from kids cartoons to video games, and the film has been cited as a major influence on everything from Breaking Bad to The Stone Roses song Fools Gold. William Friedkin, Spike Lee, Stanley Kubrick, Sam Raimi and Vince Gilligan have all cited as one of their favourite films.
Part of the reason for its endurance is its oddness. As much as it follows expected routes and classic tropes, it's wildly unconventional for its time. It makes its A-list star a villain, there's no happy ending, there's no romantic subplot, and it's far grimmer than most movies of the age.
The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre is one of those films that has quietly seeded its way through pop culture. It wasn't a box office smash, hasn't been rebooted or remade, and doesn't get regularly discussed with the fervour of say Citizen Kane or Casablanca or The Godfather. But much like greed itself, it endures, finding its way into the hearts and minds of those who watch it. But in a good way.
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