The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

 3/4

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt, Walter Huston

Not Rated (probable PG-13 for Violence)

The best stories are based not fan service, franchises and marketing, but on human nature.  The ones that demonstrate human behavior we can understand and identify with are going to more memorable than the ones that pack the most punch.  Such is the case with "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," which is about insidious nature of greed, and the price a man has to pay for falling victim to it.

Two drifters, Dobbs (Bogart) and Curtin (Holt) are barely eking out an existence in the oil town of Tampico, Mexico.  In a visit to a moldy, run down hotel, they run into an old man named Howard (Huston), who inflames their imaginations with tales of riches from gold digging.  He warns them of the downsides of wealth and how it can turn even the most goodhearted man rotten.  All out of options, the three men go into the Mexican desert in search of gold.  Finding the treasure was easy.  Keeping it is something else entirely.

This is not an original idea for a story.  But it's well told (although erratically paced) by veteran director John Huston.  Huston himself adapted the screenplay from the novel by B. Traven, about whom little is known.  The director shows a solid gift for navigating genres and tones and creating a sense of growing dread for what must eventually happen.  His control over the film's trajectory isn't flawless (sometimes it gets too cute or too lighthearted and it wrecks the mood), but it's respectable.

This is, for the most part, a three character story: Dobbs, Curtin, and Howard.  Thus, the only actors with more than token screen time are Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt, and Walter Huston.  The strongest performance is given by Humphrey Bogart, whose screen presence and acting style often obscured just how good of an actor he was.  The range demanded by this role is incredible.  Dobbs is a likable loser with a strong sense of integrity who descends into madness.  Bogart never strikes a false note.  Walter Huston (the director's father) won an Oscar for playing Howard, and while the character is interesting as written, on screen he's just another old fashioned person who talks fast and never shuts up.  It gets old.  The other member of the trio is Tim Holt, who plays the least corrupt of the three men.  The danger with this kind of character is that he could be one-note or too good to be true, but Holt is too good for that to happen.

I did have some problems with it.  For one thing, the film is too long.  Two hours is too long to tell this story.  It's more ambitious than your standard order adventure story, and I applaud Huston for taking risks. But some tighter editing would have helps give this film a bigger impact.  And while the film's shifting tones are mostly successful, there are definitely times when it doesn't work.  The ending in particular doesn't work.  What should be a gut punch to the senses feels muted, and there's a happy ending pasted on to a story that absolutely does not call for it.  Whether it was studio interference, the demands of the Hays Code, or something else entirely, it misfires so badly that it's almost embarrassing.

While I can't laud "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" as the classic some have labeled it as, the film has held up well.  It has a lot of energy and suspense.  Not to mention a palpable sense of dread.  Whatever flaws the film may have, its influence on other films is hard to deny.  Movies like "A Simple Plan" owe a huge debt to this movie.

It isn't perfect, but it's worth carving out time for.