Rating:
Humphrey Bogart did the same thing in every movie, to different degrees, from thoroughly grizzled in The African Queen to—for Bogart—downright sentimental in Casablanca. The question, then, is when he did it best. Was Sam Spade the peak Bogart character? Or Philip Marlowe? It’s nearly impossible to choose, but an argument can be mounted that Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is Bogart’s greatest achievement.

We first meet up with Dobbs in desperation and penury, homeless and begging on the streets of Tampico. All he wants is to get his head above water, to live comfortably without having to depend on handouts from rich American vacationers. Nothin’ fancy, just freedom from poverty.

Even when he first hits on the idea of prospecting for gold, his ambitions remain modest. Howard (Walter Huston, in one of the best-deserved Academy Award winning performances of all time), another drifter with some experience as a prospector, tells him what gold does to a man, the way getting a little only makes you hungry for a whole lot more. Dobbs insists that won’t happen to a simple, reasonable man like him, that he’ll just collect his little piece and go home.

We know better, of course. Dobbs, Howard, and a third young down-and-out named Curtin (Tim Holt) set off in search of veins of gold and barely any time has passed before they all, but Dobbs in particular, begin to feel the effects of potential wealth. Once they actually start to find gold, Dobbs plummets into greed-fueled madness in record time.

Dobbs views everyone’s actions with suspicion, and the more gold the three companions find the more pronounced his paranoia becomes. Soon this regular guy is pulling guns on his friends and voting to kill strangers, all to make sure nobody comes near his supply of gold, already greater than he ever expected it would be.

And that’s what the movie’s about, the immediate, irresistible corrupting influence of a avarice. It’s the greatest exploration the snowballing effect of lust for money and what it can do to a person since von Stroheim’s Greed. (The film shares other surface similarities with that silent masterpiece, including its budget-busting location shooting.)

It’s a slight to the fabulous Walter Huston to talk only of Bogart, but man is he great. His transformation from likeable loser to nasty paranoiac to murderous madman is what performance is all about. When his greed finally forces him to kill, his lonely monologue where he tries to convince himself he’s done all the right things, regardless of what a pest like a conscience might say, is one of cinema’s all time highlights.

If your New Year’s resolution was to see some of the great movies you’ve missed out on, and you haven’t yet experienced The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, there’s no better way for you to start your year’s viewing.

BONUS NOTE: What’s the deal with Humphrey Bogart being in movies whose most famous lines are never actually said by anybody? We all know no one in Casablanca ever actually says “Play it again, Sam,” and in  The Treasure of the Sierra Madre the menacing bandit almost but not quite says “We don’t need no steenkin’ badges.” Coincidence, or secret government plot?

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