The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Review

John Huston had wanted to film B. Traven's novel since 1935, and the war delayed it until he could take a Warner Bros. unit to Mexico, one of the first Hollywood productions shot abroad. Jack Warner, expecting a cheap western, watched the dailies and yelled that they were looking for gold all right, his. Ted McCord's location photography has a grit no backlot could fake.

Humphrey Bogart badgered Huston for the part of Fred C. Dobbs and played him without a shred of vanity: stubbled, whining, greedy and, as the gold piles up, convinced his partners are about to kill him. Walter Huston, the director's father, is his opposite as Howard, the old prospector who has seen gold do this before and cackles about it. He learned his Spanish lines by ear and won the Oscar; his son won two more, for directing and writing, the first time a father and son won for the same film.

Huston's script is plain and exact, and it gave the movies a line everyone misquotes, Alfonso Bedoya's bandit sneering about stinking badges. The ending is a cosmic joke told with a straight face. Bogart was not even nominated. The film's descendants run from There Will Be Blood to Breaking Bad.