John Huston made all kinds of movies, from film noir (The Maltese Falcon), to war movies (The Red Badge of Courage), to heist movies (The Asphalt Jungle), to romantic adventures (The African Queen), to sports movies (Fat City), to religious movies (Wise Blood), and even a musical (Annie). The one type of story he seemed to have been drawn to more than anything else, however, is a character’s quest after something, be it treasure (The Maltese Falcon), love (Reflections in a Golden Eye), a white whale (Moby Dick), or home (The Asphalt Jungle), and while the quest has usually been futile, Huston usually finds something noble or honorable in the quest, especially the futility of it, even when undertaken by less than honorable people. One of the best films Huston ever made along those lines was The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which he also adapted from the novel by B. Traven (a mysterious figure no one was able to identify).
In 1920’s Mexico, Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) and Curtin (Tim Holt) are two Americans living hand-to-mouth (Huston cameos as another American Dobbs hits up for money three times), including getting work from Pat McCormack (Barton MacLane), a corrupt businessman who has no intention of paying them (at least until they beat him up). One day, they run into Howard (Walter Huston), an elderly prospector who tells them he knows where there’s gold, and he’s willing to go after it, but only if he has partners. When Dobbs wins the lottery, he and Holt now have the funds to go in, and they agree to go with Howard to a spot he’s told them about. At first, it’s slow going, and Dobbs and Curtin are ready to quit, until Howard points them in the right direction. They get enough gold they can dream about what they’ll do with it – Howard just wants a store of his own, while Curtin wants an orchard farm, and Dobbs just wants to spend it all – but there are outside forces to deal with. For starters, there’s Cody (Bruce Bennett), another prospector, whom they become suspicious of. There’s also a group of Mexican bandits, led by Gold Hat (Alfonso Bedoya), whom they tangle with. Most importantly, however, Dobbs starts getting paranoid about the others, especially Curtin, taking his gold away from him.
Huston wasn’t often known for his visual sense, as just about every movie he made was an adaptation, and he saw himself as serving the material. However, he and cinematographer Ted D. McCord (a veteran of 20 years whose most distinguished credit before this was Action in the North Atlantic, a so-so WWII movie starring Bogart) do a good job of showing the harshness of the Mexican landscape, which helps contribute to the way the characters, especially Dobbs, are affected by their pursuit of the gold. Unlike many other Hollywood movies of the time, Huston actually casts Mexican actors as Mexicans (though not always; Robert Blake plays the boy who sells the lottery ticket to Bogart), and we hear Spanish spoken by them amongst themselves. Huston, who actually lived in Mexico for a long time, seems to know the territory, and the people well. Some critics then and now complained about Max Steiner’s score being too melodramatic and intrusive, but it’s so well-written and catchy it doesn’t bother me. Huston also handles the theme of greed and how it changes men well without being heavy-handed about it. He’s helped, of course, by the acting. Bogart and Walter Huston weren’t the type of actors who could disappear into their roles, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t good actors, or capable of subtlety. Watch the scene when Dobbs says they should kill Cody, and Howard conveys he’s against it but not willing to argue about it, or the scene where Dobbs finds out what he thought had happened didn’t actually happen. Holt was never the greatest actor, but he holds his own against Bogart and the elder Huston. Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a direct influence on films such as Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan and Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (which Claude and I discuss in Part 2 of our latest episode), but it stands out on its own.
