The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Written & Directed by John Huston

1998 List Ranking: 30

2007 List Ranking: 38

Quick! For those of you playing along at home, what is my least-favorite film genre?

If you said “westerns”, you’re correct! Despite an appeal that would seem right up my alley, I just can’t stand most westerns. 1992’s Unforgiven was moderately okay, but most of the westerns I’ve seen are just deathly dull and boring. Unfortunately, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre didn’t do anything to change my mind. While it has an interesting premise, it’s handled in a way that doesn’t do itself any favors and becomes just another slog to get through.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre follows three men: Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), Howard (Walter Huston), and Curtin (Tim Holt). The three men set off from the Mexican town of Tampico on a quest to find and mine gold from the Mexican hills. As they make their discovery, the promise of wealth slowly ignites a sense of paranoia between all of them, leading to disastrous results.

Holt, Bogart, and Huston

Of the three, Bogart is the most exhausting (for reasons I’ll get to in just a moment), but the performances of Huston (director John Huston’s father) and Holt are much more engaging. Huston does a nice job of being the “cool head” of the three, even if his role is just one step shy of constantly looking into the camera, The Office-style, to roll his eyes at the behavior of the other two. Holt plays the balance between the good and bad sides of his character rather well, and as a result I found myself wanting the film to focus on him as it’s lead character.

Bogart in the thrall of paranoia

Instead, we get Bogart. In my review for The Maltese Falcon, I noted that I liked Bogart’s performance in Casablanca, but not as much in Falcon. Here, he gives another performance that I didn’t enjoy, so his place on good actors in my mental ranking is quickly deteriorating. The biggest problem I have with Bogart is, admittedly, perhaps not his fault, but the script’s: the theme of the film is the descent of men from good to bad, hopeful to paranoid. For Bogart, that descent begins and ends in almost the same scene. Once gold is discovered (or even mentioned), he becomes almost an entirely different person, so there is no progression. That progression is one of the best things that good writing can produce; it’s interesting to see the different choices that one makes to become the person they are. Breaking Bad’s main character, Walter White (whose character arc was inspired by this film), is a great example: Viewers tuned in to each episode to see what further choices White would make to continue his slide to the dark side.

Suffice all this to say that perhaps Bogart’s performance isn’t entirely his fault, but I think there has to be a grey area between bad acting and poor writing. When the theme of the film is telegraphed so clearly and loudly (indeed, the idea that THIS FILM IS GOING TO BE ABOUT HOW GREED TURNS MEN INTO AWFUL PEOPLE could not have been more clearly stated early in the film if there were a giant neon sign that flashed in the center of the screen. What I mean is, subtle, it ain’t), then there needs to be some time for that theme to evolve and mature. This film is more like “Let’s make Humphrey Bogart turn bad OKAY IT HAPPENED NOW JUST KEEP WATCHING FOR ANOTHER 90 MINUTES”.

An intruder comes into camp

That leads me to the pace of the film. This film feels much longer than its two-hour run time, and I think that’s due to the fact that, in a film that’s going to explore the descent of man into paranoia, then maybe it should spend its running time doing so, not getting it over with and then spending the bulk of its runtime watching the men be paranoid with each other. I would have much rather have seen a film that focused more on that slide into paranoia, more of a slow boil sort of storytelling. Instead, the story just gets repetitive and dull.

I’ve noted before that, as a fan of film music, I haven’t really talked about the music of many of these films that I’ve reviewed, but I do want to quickly point out the great use of what I call “crazy violins” as Bogart talks to himself. A “crazy violin” is basically a frantic sound on (what I assume are) violins that audibly illustrate a characters madness or a break in their psyche. I’m sure there’s a proper name for this sort of musical technique, and that this whole paragraph has made my husband’s eye twitch.

Overall, I really wanted to like this film based on its initial description, but I really didn’t. It’s a great scenario and premise, but it’s just handled poorly, and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

FINAL GRADE: C-