Review of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) by Matthew H — 20 May 2010

I first saw The Treasure of the Sierra Madre years ago. I probably wasn't even a teenager at the time and ever since, I have remembered it fondly. Never being able to get the DVD in the UK, I was delighted to find it available in a Bogart boxset and so, at 24, got the opportunity to watch it for a second time.

It's most likely that I liked the movie so much the first time because of its adventurous plot with bandits and the idea of searching for your fortune in gold, just the kind of things that interest boys. The second time I saw the movie, however, I looked at it differently. Sure, the qualities that appealed to me as a child are still there and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre does it better than most other films that I have seen. What I noticed this time, however was the impact of the story on the characters.

The story focuses on Fred C. Dobbs and Bob Curtain, two down on their luck losers with no money in Tampico, Mexico. By chance, they meet a grizzled prospector named Howard and the three of them end up going off in search of their fortunes in gold. Along the way, they run into a rival gold digger, bandits and the trials of living in the mountains with limited water for an extended time. Where the plot really shines is in the way that the gold and the prospect of wealth manipulates Fred C. Dobbs, taking him from an opportunist willing to make himself a few dollars on the trip to a paranoid, greedy untrustworthy man.

John Huston directs the film to near perfection and the only thing that I can fault is the fact it feels a tad long now an again. The cast however, does a sterling job of bringing the novel to life, the stand-out performance coming from Humphrey Bogart as Dobbs. Tim Holt is good but nowhere near Bogey in the acting stakes. Walter Huston also does a great job, putting in an Oscar winning performance as Howard, the prospector and he provides the voice of experience along the way. As the characters stumble along the road in search of their fortunes, through their encounters with bandits and each other, they create one hell of an entertaining movie along the way.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre may be an adventure movie with bits of western thrown in here and there but at the core it is a fascinating character study. It depicts perfectly the negative effect of wealth on the character of Fred C. Dobbs. Bogart deserved an Oscar for this performance but I don't care that he didn't win because at the end of the day, when all said and done, his was the best male performance of 1948 and he is the reason that this movie is still remembered so fondly 62 years later.