The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (film)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is John Huston's 1948 American feature film adaptation ofB. Traven's 1927 novel of the same name, in which two impecunious 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.

Background

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 theFederales, 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 "lastcigarette" by the army units after capture, even having to dig their own graves first.

[edit]Plot

This is the context in which the two gringos, Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) and Curtin (Tim Holt) meet up with Howard (Walter Huston) and band together in a small Mexican town and 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. Once out in the desert, Howard (the eldest 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 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. At this time a fourth American named James Cody (Bruce Bennett) shows up, 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 finish him off, the bandits reappear, pretending, very crudely, to be Federales. This leads to the 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 the bandits away.

But 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 out behind the camp, shoots him and leaves him for dead. However, the wounded Curtin survives and manages to crawl away during the night. Later, Dobbs is decapitated by some of the same bandits from the earlier attack, who, in their ignorance, believe the bags of unrefined gold to be bags of sand and scatter them to the winds. Curtin is discovered by Indians 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 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.

[edit]Cast

Frame from the film trailer

• Humphrey Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs
• Walter Huston as Howard
• Tim Holt as Bob Curtin
• Bruce Bennett as James Cody
• Barton MacLane as Pat McCormick
• Alfonso Bedoya as Gold Hat
• Arturo Soto Rangel as El Presidente
• Manuel Dondé as El Jefe
• José Torvay as Pablo
• Margarito Luna as Pancho

[edit]Production

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.^[1] 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.

[edit]Quotation

Main article: Stinking badges

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:

Gold Hat (Alfonso Bedoya): "We are Federales... you know, the mounted police."

Dobbs (Bogart): "If you're the police, where are your badges?"

Gold Hat (Bedoya): "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!"

In 2005, the quotation was chosen as #36 on the American Film Institute list, AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes.

[edit]Awards and honors

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.^[2]

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]

American Film Institute recognition

• 1998 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #30
• 2001 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills #67
• 2005 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes:
  • "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!" #36
• 2007 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #38

Posted in: Top Movies Wiki