The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

User Rating:

8.5/10   

Director:

John Huston

Writers:

John Huston (screenplay)
B. Traven (novel)

Release Date:

24 January 1948 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Western | Action

Tagline:

The more he yearns for a woman's arms . . . the fiercer he lusts for the treasure that cursed them all!

Plot:

Fred C. Dobbs and Bob Curtin, both down on their luck in Tampico, Mexico in 1925, meet up with a grizzled...

Plot Keywords:

Gold | Mexico | Prospector | Greed | Tampico Mexico

Awards:

Won 3 Oscars. Another 9 wins & 4 nominations

Cast

Humphrey Bogart	...	Dobbs
Walter Huston	...	Howard
Tim Holt	...	Curtin
Bruce Bennett	...	Cody
Barton MacLane	...	McCormick (as Barton Mac Lane)
Alfonso Bedoya	...	Gold Hat
Arturo Soto Rangel	...	Presidente (as A. Soto Rangel)
Manuel Dondé	...	El Jefe (as Manuel Donde)
José Torvay	...	Pablo (as Jose Torvay)
Margarito Luna	...	Pancho

Also Known As:

Treasure of Sierra Madre (USA) (poster title)

Runtime:

126 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Canada:G (Nova Scotia/Quebec) | Canada:PG (Manitoba/Ontario) | South Korea:12 | West Germany:12 (nf) | Canada:PG (video rating) | Norway:16 | West Germany:6 | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Netherlands:AL | Sweden:15 (1977) | UK:PG | USA:Approved (certificate #12347)

Filming Locations:

Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

Producer Henry Blanke had originally wanted John Garfield in the Tim Holt role, but Garfield was unavailable. Ronald Reagan was then considered.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: In the last scene, after Curtin has been shot and his arm is put in a sling, he hops onto his horse by pulling himself up entirely with his hurt arm. He takes the time to slip his arm back into the sling in the same shot.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Dobbs: Say buddy, will you stake a fellow Am...

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in "Good Eats: The Muffin Man (#7.4)" (2003)

Soundtrack:

Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms

Unbeatable.

I wish I knew who B. Traven was. He wrote the novel this film is based on, and it's a good read. There are stories that he was a German. Maybe he was. The dialogue has little German touches in it. Traven surely lived in modest circumstances in Mexico, the details of run-down hotels being far too accurate to have been made up in a comfortable armchair.

But it's not really important. Huston and his cast and crew have turned the novel into a movie that is as good as anything likely to show up on the screen. It is in fact an astounding achievement. I can't even begin to list the moments that stamp themselves indelibely into one's memory, but I will mention one, just en passant, so to speak. After killing his partner and friend, Bogart lies down next to a fire and tries to go to sleep. He talks to himself about "conscience" and how it only bother you if you allow it to, and the fake fire blazes up higher and higher between the actor and the camera until he seems to be consumed by the flame.

Alfonso Bedoya. He made a few other movies but nothing resembling this one.

What lines he is given! "Aww, come on. Throw that old iron over here." "There's a good business for Jew." And the unforgettable "batches," which doesn't need repeating.

It is surely one of Huston's best films. A lesser director could have ruined the novel's plot. But Huston adds his own touches. Cody is killed, shot through the neck, and the old man reads a letter from his wife, retrieved from Cody's pocket. But -- he doesn't know how to read big words!

So Curtin takes the letter and reads it. It's not just a directorial flash in the pan, because the scene resonates at the end of the movie when Curtin rides off to meet Cody's wife in the blossom-blooming orchard. What I mean is that the letter-reading scene is there for a larger purpose than simply adding to our appreciation of the characters at that particular moment.

The fight with Pat in the cantina. Absolutely nothing happens the way it had always happened in previous movies. Huston stages it in a way that an artist would think of. In all movies before this one fights involved (1) a general melee in which no one wins or loses, or (2) one clip on the jaw and the guy is unconscious. Here, MacCormack, the heavy, done very nicely by Barton Maclaine, bashes one guy over the head with a bottle of booze and socks the other one. But somebody grabs his legs as he tries to walk out the door. More blows. Bodies slump to the floor and they have a hell of a time getting back up on their feet. More blows. Pat is finally beaten to the floor and he's not unconscious. "Okay. Enough, fellas. I'm beat. I can't see." Bogart and Tim Holt take only the money that is owing to them, and Curtin (Holt) comes up with, "Let's beat it before the law arrives." Before the law arrives. That's straight out of Traven's novel and is one of the reasons people believe he wasn't that familiar with the English language. Not that it doesn't fit -- because it does.

I could go on listing one scene after another that is simply outstanding but there isn't space enough to do it. I watched this repeatedly with my ten year old kid, Josh, who finally memorized almost every word of the script. I showed it in classes in psychology at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina as an almost flawless depiction of an ego defense mechanism called "projection." The Marines loved it. I loved it. My kid loved it. John Simon loved it. Rush Limbaugh loved it. Martha Stewart loved it. Napolean Bonaparte loved it. Moses loved it. Lenin loved it. St. Peter, when not attending the pearly gates, watches it on cable TV. (No commercials.) Everybody loves it -- and for good reasons.