Treasure of the Sierra Madre - A- (AFI 100 Series)

On DVD (1948). #38 on the AFI list.

After Paul Thomas Anderson cited Treasure of the Sierra Madre as a major influence on There Will Be Blood, I moved it up in my queue. The film tells the story of drifter Dodds (Humphrey Bogart) and his adventures as an unlikely gold prospector in the wiles of Mexico. Director John Huston uses the story to try and show the impact of greed on men and the problems that individualism can cause - obviously the same themes PTA was reaching for in TWBB. For me, Bogart's performance is hammy and hard to relate to. Although Huston won the Academy Award for adapted screenplay, I thought Bogart's Dodds character was less than compelling because he is such a loser. Click below for more on MADRE:

He starts out begging for money in Tampico and ends up being tricked about another job, only lucking into the trip with the knowledgeable prospector. As a viewer, I would expect someone like that to fall prey to the temptation to sell out and even kill your friends for money, so his fall from grace wasn't compelling for me. Interestingly, the other main character, the experienced prospector, is played by John Huston's father, Walter. One big bonus for the film was the appearance of the infamous "Badges, we don't need no stinkin' badges" line from a very stereotypical Mexican bandit.

The film is beautifully shot in black and white and has several great sequences during the prospecting trip, especially during the visit to their camp by a friendly stranger. Huston touches on environmentalism ever so briefly when the group chooses to repair the mountain after they finish prospecting instead of leaving it "wounded". He was way ahead of his time on that one.

I like the film, but Bogart didn't do it for me and I am in the middle of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which takes the opposite view of greed and capitalism (I agree with Rand), so maybe it was the wrong time for this one. I can see the influences of the film on the structure and overall TWBB themes, but to me its not even close as to which is better.