| The Treasure of the Sierra Madre | |
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Theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | John Huston |
| Produced by | Henry Blanke |
| Screenplay by | John Huston |
| Based on | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven |
| Starring | Humphrey Bogart Walter Huston Tim Holt Bruce Bennett |
| Music by | Max Steiner |
| Cinematography | Ted D. McCord |
| Editing by | Owen Marks |
| Studio | Warner Bros.-First National Picture |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | January 6, 1948 |
| Running time | 126 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3.8 million |
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a 1948 American film written and directed by John Huston, a feature film adaptation of B. Traven's 1927 novel of the same name, in which two impecunious Americans Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) and Bob Curtin (Tim Holt) during the 1920s in Mexico join with an old-timer, Howard (Walter Huston, the director's father), to prospect for gold. The old-timer accurately predicts trouble, but is willing to go anyway.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was one of the first Hollywood films to be filmed almost entirely on location outside the United States (in the state of Durango and street scenes in Tampico, Mexico), although the night scenes were filmed back in the studio. The film is quite faithful to the novel. In 1990, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[1]
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By the 1920s the violence of the Mexican Revolution had largely subsided, although scattered gangs of bandits continued to terrorize the countryside. The newly established post-revolution government relied on the effective, but ruthless, Federal Police, commonly known as the Federales, to patrol remote areas and dispose of the bandits. Foreigners, like the three U.S. prospectors who are the protagonists in the story, were at very real risk of being killed by the bandits if their paths crossed. The bandits, likewise, were given little more than a "last cigarette" by the army units after capture, even having to dig their own graves first.
Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) and Curtin (Tim Holt), cheated out of promised wages and down on their luck, meet old prospector Howard (Walter Huston) in a small Mexican town. They set out to strike it rich in the remote Sierra Madre mountains, searching for gold.
They ride a train into the hinterlands, surviving a bandit attack en route. In the desert, Howard proves to be the toughest and most knowledgeable; he is the one to discover the gold they seek. A mine is dug, and much gold is extracted. Greed soon sets in, and Dobbs begins to lose both his trust and his sanity, lusting to possess the entire treasure. Dobbs is also unreasonably afraid that he will be killed by his partners.
A fourth American named James Cody (Bruce Bennett) appears, which sets up a moral debate about what to do with the new stranger. The men decide to kill Cody, but just as the three confront him with pistols and prepare to kill him, the bandits reappear, crudely pretending to be Federales. (This leads to a now-iconic line about not needing to show any "stinking badges.") After a gunfight with the bandits, in which Cody is killed, a real troop of Federales appears and chases away the bandits.
When Howard is called away to assist some local villagers, Dobbs, who has become more paranoid, and Curtin constantly argue, until one night when Curtin falls asleep, Dobbs holds him at gunpoint, takes him behind the camp, shoots him, and leaves him for dead. However, the wounded Curtin survives and manages to crawl away during the night.
Dobbs is later ambushed and decapitated by some of the bandits. In their ignorance, the bandits believe Dobbs' bags of unrefined gold are merely filled with sand, and they scatter the gold to the winds. Curtin is discovered by indios and taken to Howard's village, where he recovers. He and Howard miss witnessing the bandits' execution by Federales by only a few minutes as they arrive back in town, and learn that the gold is gone.
While checking the area where the bandits dropped the gold, Howard realizes that the winds must have carried the gold away. They accept the loss with equanimity, and then part ways, Howard returning to his village, and Curtin returning home to the United States.
A few notable uncredited actors appear in the film. In an opening cameo, director John Huston is pestered for money by Bogart's character. Actor Robert Blake also appears as a young boy selling lottery tickets. However, the most controversial cameo is the rumored one by Ann Sheridan. Sheridan allegedly did a cameo as a streetwalker. After Dobbs leaves the barbershop in Tampico (actually a set on a studio soundstage), he spies a passing prostitute who returns his look. Seconds later, the woman is picked up again by the camera, but this time in the distance. Some filmgoers and critics feel the woman looks nothing like Sheridan, but the DVD commentary for the film contains a statement that it is she. A photograph included in the documentary accompanying the DVD release shows Sheridan in streetwalker costume, with Bogart and Huston on the set. However, single frames of the film show a different woman in a different dress and different hairstyle, raising the possibility that Sheridan filmed the sequence but that it was reshot with another woman for indeterminate reasons.[2] Many film-history sources credit Sheridan for the part.
Co-star Tim Holt's father, Jack Holt, a star of silent and early sound Westerns and action films, makes a one-line appearance at the beginning of the film as one of the men down on their luck.
Significant portions of the film's dialog are in unsubtitled Spanish.
The opening scenes, filmed in longshot in Plaza de la Libertad, Tampico, show modern (i.e. of the 1940s) cars and buses, even though the story opens in 1925, as evidenced by the lottery numbers poster.
Dobbs is often used as a foil for Howard's philosophical comments on the value of gold and one's responsibilities to one's companions. For example,
Howard: Say, answer me this one, will you? Why is gold worth some twenty bucks an ounce?
Dobbs: I don't know. Because it's scarce.
Howard: A thousand men, say, go searchin' for gold. After six months, one of them's lucky: one out of a thousand. His find represents not only his own labor, but that of nine hundred and ninety-nine others to boot. That's six thousand months, five hundred years, scramblin' over a mountain, goin' hungry and thirsty. An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the findin' and the gettin' of it.
Dobbs: I never thought of it just like that.
Howard: Well, there's no other explanation, mister. Gold itself ain't good for nothing except making jewelry with and gold teeth.
The film is the origin of a famous line, often misquoted as "We don't need no stinking badges!" (homaged in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, also a Warner Bros. film). The correct dialogue is:
In 2005, the quotation was chosen as #36 on the American Film Institute list, AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes.
John Huston won the Academy Award for Directing and Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay in 1948 for his work on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Walter Huston, John Huston's father, also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in this film, the first father-son win. The film was nominated for the Best Picture award, but lost to Laurence Olivier's film adaptation of Hamlet.
In 1990, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film was among the first 100 films to be selected.[1]
Director Stanley Kubrick listed The Treasure of Sierra Madre as his 4th favorite film of all time in his list of his top ten favorite films, and director Paul Thomas Anderson watched it at night before bed while writing his film There Will Be Blood.[3]
In the 1950 Warner Bros. animated cartoon, 8 Ball Bunny, a running gag throughout the short is that a cartoon version of Humphrey Bogart would show up in the most out-of-the-way places, using one of his lines from this film, "Pardon me, but could you help out a fellow American who's down on his luck?"