Barker’s Classic Movies #1: THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE *****
In the age of DVD, Netflix and Turner Classic Movies, there’s never an excuse to be bored. Each month, Eric Barker offers up a cinematic treat, the best of the best from 110 years of moviemaking, the films that you should know, and love, and collect, and why…
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
2h., 6m. / original studio: Warner Brothers
directed by John Huston; screenplay by John Huston, from novel by B. Traven; director of photography, Ted McCord; edited by Owen Marks; music by Max Steiner
with: Humphrey Bogart (Dobbs), Walter Huston (Howard), Tim Holt (Curtin), Bruce Bennett (Cody), Barton MacLane (Pat McCormick), Alfonso Bedoya (Gold Hat)
“You know, the worst ain’t so bad when it finally happens. Not half as bad as you figure it’ll be before it’s happened.” — Tim Holt as Curtin
One of the true wonders of Classic Hollywood and one of the best movies ever made, John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a singularity in the annals of American moviemaking, a big budget, major studio film so far off the beaten track, it would frighten away any self respecting film executive even yet.
First off, it’s a dark tale about the ravages of greed, never a popular box-office theme, in which the biggest movie star of the era portrays a weak-minded, immoral, probably crazy bum. Second, it’s an adventure film totally lacking in the familiar genre conventions that audiences still expect from the movies, telling them that risk is always glamorous, safe as a Disney roller coaster, and that the good guys always win. Third, it’s a movie in which about one-fifth of the dialogue is in Spanish, without subtitles. And finally, there isn’t a whiff of romance, not a single pretty face to soften the film’s hard-edged realism. Almost sixty years later, it’s easy to recognize The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as a landmark, simply for all of the things it doesn’t do as a movie.
But there are plenty of things it does do that make it a must-see classic. Based on a Marxist novel by the elusive B. Traven, Treasure is a model of narrative construction, a film by a writer-director who appreciated the virtues of good fiction, and who made movies for the love of practicing his skills, rather than simply to make a buck. John Huston was a master of the literary adaptation who understood that all really good stories are character driven, regardless of the medium, that every good plot hinges on the veracity of its characters, their interactions with each other and their environment. A pretty good writer himself, Huston created an huge gallery of indelible characters on film during his forty-six years as a filmmaker, and he did it through a combination of fidelity to his original source material and a gift for brilliant casting. In Huston’s movies there are no stars, just good actors being given the room to become their roles.
Treasure is Huston’s masterpiece, an absorbing blend of epic quest and contemporary drama in which three disparate travelers search for gold in an ancient and mysterious land and, finding it, come undone. This is Huston’s most common theme, the self-delusions of ordinary, sometimes foolish people who struggle to realize extraordinary dreams and in the process are blinded to the things they should be valuing, such as friendship, loyalty and trust. And even though his script for Treasure, by necessity, tones down most of Traven’s Marxist critique — in the book there is no mistake, these very American men are exploiting a foreign country out of their own capitalist venality — the film has definite implications for our own time, making Treasure a remarkably prescient movie. Even so, by removing any ham-fisted references to politics Huston transforms Treasure into a universal tale of human folly (and one of which Traven himself heartily approved), giving it the luster of satire and fable.
Humphrey Bogart gives what is arguably his finest performance, certainly his most daring, as Fred C. Dobbs, a hard-bitten, mercurial little man beaten up by life, moving from job to job in Mexico, who befriends two other men on the skids, Curtin (Tim Holt) and Howard (Walter Huston, the director’s father). Together the three set out on a journey into the mountains searching for gold, with the wizened, crafty Howard as their undeclared leader, the only one of the group with any real experience at prospecting. Their working class brotherhood is never very noble, however: while Curtin is a reasonable fellow, willing to roll with whatever happens, Dobbs brags and complains and threatens every step of the way.
When Howard’s expertise finally lands them in the middle of a modest gold strike far from civilization, Dobbs’ worst side begins to surface, his mind coming unhinged before our very eyes, talking to himself, accusing the others of treachery, wildly paranoid about the most innocuous comments and actions. Though he is always able to return to reality, each of his lapses is a little worse than before and we can feel it is only a matter of time before he completely disintegrates.
But there is no predicting when The Treasure of the Sierra Madre will take that turn, or what will happen when it does. This is, after all, an adventure tale, and the trio must overcome many obstacles: there are numerous battles with Nature; a genial interloper named Cody, whose sly wisdom, clear-eyed reason and desperation for a break mirrors all three protagonists; a pack of bandits on the run from revolution and out for blood; and a tribe of peaceful indians who take a strong liking to Howard. Each of these elements mesh into a gripping tale of men under pressure, their civilized masks dropping away as the going gets tough, revealing their true personalities.
The art of Humphrey Bogart was never more in evidence than it is here, his Dobbs morphing from an almost comical, buffoonish thug into a frightening, flesh-and-blood psycho, and finally, becoming a pitiful figure who is worthy of our compassion rather than our judgment. But Treasure has more than one great performance or it wouldn’t be a John Huston movie: Walter Huston almost steals the show as Howard, a cackling, fast-talking sage who turns out to have an almost spiritual approach toward the prospector’s life. His dance of triumph when he discovers the treasure is one of the signature moments in American cinema, in some ways worth the entire movie, an astonishing revelation of character with few equals.
Equally good is the Mexican actor Alfonso Bedoya as Gold Hat, the ruthless bandit who shadows the prospectors wherever they go. Blessed with the film’s most famous and misquoted line (see Notes), Bedoya shines in a seminal portrait of cunning and cruelty which, despite more than fifty years of imitators, still feels drawn from life. This is because, like all great actors, he doesn’t seem to be acting, though he is using his voice and body to tell us things about the character that are not in the words. Even Tim Holt, a second generation film actor who never quite became a star, though he cropped up in important films on a regular basis, is affecting as the quiet, good-hearted Curtin, perhaps the only sane person in the film’s cast of rogues and misfits.
John Huston’s second feature as both writer and director, Treasure is a clear follow-up to his remarkable debut The Maltese Falcon (1941), repeating numerous themes and motifs from that film, in particular the mythic quest condensed into modern terms of psychological realism. But this time the scale is epic, Huston taking a huge chance by shooting the film on location in Mexico, which made studio chiefs extremely nervous in the forties and with good reason. Numerous weather delays made the film go thousands of dollars over budget and almost two months over schedule, despite Huston’s planning for more than half of the shoot to be done on the sound stages of Warner Brothers. His reasons, however, were not landscape, as they might have been with, say, John Ford or David Lean.
Huston’s visual style always grew out of the movement of actors within the frame, a stream of ever-changing tableaux that underscored the characters’ relationships to each other, and since he only hired the best actors, he often let them block out their scenes first, then set up his camera accordingly. Huston went on location to get the people of Mexico into his movie, and to get the country into his lead actors, to allow the inimitable atmosphere of the villages and the language to seep into the film without forcing or faking it. His gamble gave Treasure a richness and authenticity that immediately set it apart from other films of the era, and makes it one of the finest films an American has ever made about our neighbor to the south.
Chiefly financed because of Bogart’s participation and support, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was an unqualified critical smash in 1948, winning a shelf-full of trophies during the award season, then fizzling at the box-office, probably because audiences had grown accustomed to seeing the film’s star as a heroic figure. Show-stopping highlights include: John Huston’s cameo as a tourist in a white suit; an electrifying barroom brawl, one of the most convincing ever staged; Walter Huston’s loquacious entrance in a flophouse; Bogart going mad in the wilderness, like a King Lear wracked by detox; Howard trying to revive a drowning boy; the chilling final confrontation with the bandit Gold Hat; the magnificently ironic denouement.
Outstanding film editing by Owen Marks, a Warners workhorse who shaped several memorable films of the era (including Casablanca, 1942). One of Max Steiner’s subtler music scores. Watch for a diminutive, 14-year-old Robert Blake in dark makeup, as a boy selling lottery tickets.
NOTES:
THE LEGENDARY LINE: Bedoya quoted verbatim: “Badges?…We ain’t got no badges…We don’t need no badges!…I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!”
BOGIE: Humphrey Bogart (1899-1958) was a stage-trained actor by profession, a movie star by hard work and perseverance. Often called an unlikely romantic lead because of his eccentric looks, which some have found ugly, he was typecast as a ladies’ man during his 15 years on Broadway. In Hollywood he was typecast again, as thugs and madmen, after his brilliant portrayal of gangster Duke Mantee in both stage and screen versions of The Petrified Forest (1936).
But after John Huston cast him as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941) Bogie was box-office gold, eventually becoming the highest paid actor in the world. His personality was so unique and powerful, most people do not think of him as versatile, but in fact he was one of the greats of the 20th century. In addition to Forest and Falcon, see: High Sierra (1941, screenplay by Huston), Casablanca (1942), To Have and Have Not (1945), The Big Sleep (1946), In a Lonely Place (1950), The African Queen (1951; his Oscar), The Caine Mutiny (1954).
The superbly researched Bogart (1997) by A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax is one of the best film biographies ever written.
OSCAR DYNASTY: John Huston took home two Oscars for writing and directing Treasure, but his favorite honor was becoming the first person to direct a relative to an Oscar win — his father Walter. The casting was not mere Hollywood nepotism: sixty-three-years-old at the time of filming, Walter Huston had a forty-year career behind him as one of America’s finest actors. This was his fourth Oscar nomination in twelve years.
Four decades later, John would direct his daughter Anjelica to an Academy Award, for the delightful Prizzi’s Honor (1985), making him the first person to direct two generations of family to Oscar-winning performances, a feat not likely to be matched in the foreseeable future.
THE BEST OF JOHN HUSTON: A flamboyant, witty, hard-living Renaissance man, John Huston (1906-1987) tried many kinds of adaptations during fifty-plus years in the business (he was a screenwriter for the first decade) and many of them were mediocre or just plain terrible because he never feared to try something new. Extremely close to Bogart both personally and professionally, he was devastated by the icon’s untimely death in early 1958, and it took him years to recover his artistic edge. But he left a multi-faceted legacy, nevertheless:
Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Wise Blood (1979), Under the Volcano (1984), Prizzi’s Honor (1985), The Dead (1987).
A scene-stealing ham in his own right, Huston turned in at least one legendary performance, as Noah Cross in Chinatown (1974). He published a candid autobiography in 1980, appropriately titled An Open Book.
“B. TRAVEN”: was the nom de plume of an expatriate American writer who spent the majority of his years in Mexico. A steadfast recluse, Traven deigned to corresponded with Huston during the adaptation process for Treasure anyway, and contributed many ideas to the script. He sent a representative named Hal Croves to advise during the production, both in Mexico and L.A., and it seems likely that Croves was Traven in disguise, though Huston was never completely certain. His identity is still unknown.
THE DVD: released in a two-disc set in fall 2003 as part of Warners’ Classics series, which always offers a feast of good extras. On disc 1, the film itself has an adequate transfer, with a well remastered soundtrack. The Warner Night at the Movies feature is less pleasing than on other discs in this series, but the Bogart trailer gallery is splendid entertainment. Select “play all” and watch the fascinating arc of Bogart’s first two decades in Hollywood, from third- and fourth-billed player to name-above-the-title. The commentary by Bogart biographer Eric Lax is good, although it mostly offers facts about the Bogart-Huston relationship and is detached from the unspooling film.
On disc 2, a new 50-minute, making-of documentary, Discovering Treasure, is very informative, and the feature length John Huston: The Man, the Movies, the Maverick (1989), while suffering a pedestrian title, is a generally good compilation of interviews with Huston, his family and friends, containing rare footage from home movies and a bit of genuine insight into the man. The extra cartoon, “8 Ball Bunny,” features a funny parody of Treasure’s opening scenes, with an amusing, unshaven Bogart caricature, one of several done by the Warners animation department in the 40s and 50s.
The best price, as usual, is at DVD Planet
Eric Barker is a writer and independent filmmaker living in Denver.
