Along with the mountainous Erich von Stroheim classic GREED (which tragically exists only in a greatly abridged version, and which was based on the haunting Frank Norris current MCTEAGUE), this is the most noteworthy movie ever made on the destructive power of greed.

THE Cherish OF SIERRA MADRE is rightfully considered one of the greatest American films, and is also yet another in a string of marvelous collaborations between John Huston and Humphrey Bogart. Although Bogart made many pleasant films in the forties and fifties, a disproportionate number were with Huston, including the film that made him a star, THE MALTESE FALCON, and the film that garnered Bogie his only Oscar, THE AFRICAN QUEEN.

The cast consists primarily of three drifters who want to hit it rich in Mexico. Bogart plays Fred C. Dobbs, in one of the greatest roles of his career. The character of Bob Curtin is played by Tim Holt, a “B” actor (in the quite literal sense of having acted in scores of “B” pictures) who nonetheless managed to procure parts in some exceptionally big films, notably this one, THE Comely AMBERSONS, and MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, as well as a runt role in STAGECOACH (he plays the cavalry commander who rides a short distance with the stagecoach before departing) . Both Bogart and Holt are qualified, but the film is more or less stolen by the broad Walter Huston, John’s father, in the last big role in a long and noted career as the extinct prospector Howard.

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The film was based on a very gigantic modern by the same title by one of the most reclusive authors in the history of literature. During his lifetime, the identify of B. Traven was unknown. If you gather dust jackets for printings of his novels from the forties and fifties and sixties, the biographical details are something out of science fiction. Some even claimed that he was Jack London, living in Mexico after having faked his have death! Eventually, investigators went to Mexico after his death and searched exhaustively for the secrets to his identity. He turned out to be an ex-patriot German (not a surprise, since his books were always published in Germany before the United States) named Rex Marut. When John Huston went down to Mexico to film THE Adore OF SIERRA MADRE, he attempted to arrange a meeting with B. Traven, but was informed that he was to meet with Traven’s representative Hal Croves instead. There is a incredible photograph that exists of John Huston and “Hal Groves” talking. As he talked with Croves, Huston began to suspect that he was in fact B. Traven himself, though he was unable to lisp his suspicion. Years later, it was confirmed to Huston that Hal Groves was yet another alias for Ret Marut a.k.a. B. Traven. Given this enchanting record, it would have been wonder if they could have included as one of the extras for the DVD status the 60-minute documentary THE MAN WHO WAS B. TRAVEN. The extras are satisfactory, but this would have been a incredible addition.

Filming THE Fancy OF SIERRA MADRE in 1948 was a animated choice by John Huston. In 1947, when they were filming, a spellbinding shift to the political upright was clearly discernable. Whereas Hollywood in the 1930s had been largely leftist, in the slow forties it was unquestionably just flit. Among directors especially, there were virtually no exceptions, though two prominent directors persisted in their leftist beliefs: one was the gargantuan Billy Wilder and the other was John Huston. B. Traven himself was a liberal anarchist populist (it is widely idea he was self-exiled in Mexico because of previous political activity), and the book, as does the movie, is an attack on the materialist values driving Western civilization. Not many directors would have had the courage in 1947 (it was released in January 1948) to design a movie about the evils of greed, but Huston was one who did. Likewise, Bogart was one of the more politically liberal actors in Hollywood, and was unafraid of being in a movie with the message that this one contained.

The film is highly modern in having been filmed primarily on spot in Mexico, unlike most Hollywood films, which would merely film in some southern California dwelling. This imparts a leer to the film that sets it apart fromAlso unlike most Hollywood films, Huston actually employed Hispanic actors in Hispanic roles. This allowed one old Mexican character actor, Alfonso Bedoya, to sing one of the most celebrated lines in the history of the movies, when he tells Fred C. Dobbs, “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!”

This, one of the funniest lines in cinema, certainly one of the most celebrated, is actually (as afficionados know) a misquote. What Alfonso Bedoya, who plays “Gold Hat,” actually says, when he and his bandito friends are asked for their badges, is “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to expose you any stinkin’ badges!” I wonder if anybody at the time had any opinion how comical this would hit audiences.

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John Huston wrote the screenplay (adapting B. Traven’s unusual) and directed his father, Walter Huston along with Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt, and Bruce Bennett in this classic from my popular age of cinema (the gradual forties/early fifties) . Walter Huston won an academy award as Best Supporting Actor in 1948 and John Huston garnered Oscars for his direction and his screenplay. Bogart won nothing, but I have to say he did a sizable job.

It’s easy to deem of Humphrey Bogart as always playing Humphrey Bogart as he has done in so many movies, particularly in mysteries and especially as a private notice. But here we glimpse a different Bogart, one who is not entirely sympathetic; indeed as the down and out Fred C. Dobbs he is a bit of a scoundrel and more than a diminutive paranoid. In watching this one realizes that Bogart had a noteworthy greater range than he is sometimes given credit for. I also consume him alongside Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen (1951) also directed by John Huston, and in The Caine Mutiny (1954) . In the faded he did obtain an Oscar, and in the latter, as Captain Queeg, he gave perhaps his most unforgettable performance.

This is a memoir of greed and the fever that arises when one hunts for gold. Walter Huston plays a crusty primitive miner named Howard who tries one more time to strike it rich. Dobbs and Bob Curtin (Tim Holt) are seduced by the wily veteran miner’s romantic tales and the three of them go off into the Sierra Madre mountains advance Tampico, Mexico to prospect. Naturally they hit pay dirt, but in-between the growing madness of Dobbs and the Mexican bandits, theirs is an uneasy existence. What happens to the gold and to the three men is intelligent to gawk, and we sense a timeless human psychology at work. Bob Curtin expresses piece of it this way: “You know, the worst ain’t so abominable when it finally happens. Not half as abominable as you figure it’ll be before it’s happened.”

This movie is as great as its reputation, which is much, but it’s not perfect. Some of it plays a shrimp too simplistically, as when Howard saves the Mexican boy amid the worshipful natives, and some of it is a shrimp comic, as when the bandits mistake gold for sand–not likely! But the almost memoir quality of the story and the felicitous direction as well as many exciting and comical touches, construct this one of the best ever made, and something no good film buff should miss. By the method, the limited Mexican boy who sells Dobbs the lottery sign is a bronzed up Robert Blake.
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