Review of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) by Kate P — 01 May 2009

Key word: escalation.

At the beginning of the movie, I thought it was vaguely mediocre, with sort of lukewarm undertones about the danger of greed, an unpalatable main character in Humphrey Bogart, a lot of disparate plot elements, and Max Steiner jizzing loud noises all over the place.

Then at about the middle...the Cody character arrives. And the bandits come back in to the story. And the three-way distrust goes a bit further, and the moralistic undertones give way to plain quandaries, as occured when we read the letter from Cody's widow.

Then the unexpected happens. Bogie goes from unpalatable to straight up villain, the plot elements that have been wandering about the mountainside somehow all fit together, Steiner becomes strangely appropriate, the story goes into unexpected places, and by the last scene with the dust whirling around the ruins, the film as a whole has been elevated to the level of genius.