Old Movie Classics: Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Treasure of the Sierra Madre

The more he yearns for a woman's arms . . . the fiercer he lusts for the treasure that cursed them all!
A classic Old Movie with Humphrey Bogart. Fred C. Dobbs and Bob Curtin, both down on their luck in Tampico, Mexico in 1925, meet up with a grizzled prospector named Howard and decide to join with him in search of gold in the wilds of central Mexico. Through enormous difficulties, they eventually succeed in finding gold, but bandits, the elements, and most especially greed threaten to turn their success into disaster.
Watch Movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is John Huston's 1948 American feature film adaptation of B. Traven's 1927 novel of the same name, in which two penurious Americans (Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt) during 1920s in Mexico join with an old-timer (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.

Story Line

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 American 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.

This is the context in which the three gringos band together in a small Mexican town and set out to strike it rich in the remote Sierra Madre mountains. They ride a train into the hinterlands, surviving a bandit attack en route. Once out in the desert, Howard, the old-timer of the group, quickly proves to be by far the toughest and most knowledgeable; he is the one to discover the gold they are seeking. A mine is dug, and much gold is extracted. Greed soon sets in and Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) begins to lose both his trust and his sanity, lusting to possess the entire treasure.

(L-R) Tim Holt, Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston

Image via Wikipedia

Dobbs is also paranoid that he will be killed by his partners. At this time a fourth American shows up, which sets up a moral debate about what to do with the new stranger. The bandits then reappear, pretending, very crudely, to be Federales, which leads to the now-iconic line about not needing to show any "stinking badges". After a gunfight, and the fouth American is killed, a real troop of Federales appear and drive the bandits away.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre [Blu-ray]

Image left; (from left to right) Tim Holt, Humphrey Bogart, and Walter Huston, in a scene from "Treasure of the Sierra Madre".

But when Howard is called away to assist some local villagers, Dobbs and third partner Curtin have a final confrontation, which Dobbs wins, leaving Curtin lying shot and presumed dead. However, Curtin crawls to safety. Later, Dobbs is murdered (via decapitation) by some surviving bandits, who, in their ignorance, scatter the gold to the winds. Curtin is discovered 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 areas that 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 America.
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