The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre remains the gold stan­dard for clas­sic Hollywood

Upon leav­ing one of his favoured New York haunts, Humphrey Bog­a­rt remarked to crit­ic Archer Win­ston, ​“Wait till you see me in my next pic­ture, I play the worst shit you ever saw.” That may not sound like a ring­ing endorse­ment for any film, but Bog­a­rt wasn’t talk­ing about any old pic­ture. The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre is a hot, sweaty, pres­sure-cook­er tale of temp­ta­tion and greed that is today right­ly regard­ed as one of the great Amer­i­can clas­sics from Hollywood’s gold­en age. It is to film­mak­ers what Pulp Fic­tion is to film stu­dents, and 70 years on, its lega­cy and influ­ence are plain to see. Not that it was clear from the outset.

After read­ing the epony­mous nov­el by B Tra­ven – an author who com­mand­ed a Pyn­chon-esque aura of mys­tery – Hus­ton decid­ed it was to be his fol­low-up to The Mal­tese Fal­con. Yet the road to mak­ing the film was rocky one. Huston’s dark script was twice reject­ed by Warn­er Bros, who want­ed some­thing lighter. Then came an even greater obsta­cle as Hus­ton joined America’s fight in World War Two, leav­ing the project strand­ed in devel­op­ment hell. Huston’s pro­longed absence led to numer­ous script edits and oth­er direc­tors and stars being attached, but pro­duc­er Hen­ry Blanke man­aged to hold the fort for Hus­ton, even (alleged­ly) com­mis­sion­ing bad rewrites to fur­ther stall production.

By the time Hus­ton returned, Bog­a­rt was now a huge star. With the script finalised and Tim Holt and Wal­ter Hus­ton (John’s father) cast in the oth­er major roles, every­thing was set. But ten­sions between Hus­ton and the stu­dio ran high as the direc­tor insist­ed on shoot­ing on loca­tion in Mex­i­co. Up to that point the vast major­i­ty of Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tions were filmed on back­lots, but the tide was begin­ning to change thanks to the likes of Orson Welles, who in 1947 shot The Lady From Shang­hai at var­i­ous loca­tions across Cal­i­for­nia and Mexico.

Hus­ton won out, yet while film­ing out­side of the US lent the film a rough and ready atmos­phere, it didn’t make for a smooth pro­duc­tion. With the stu­dio unable to exert its grip across the bor­der, and the dailies not mak­ing for hap­py view­ing for stu­dio head Jack Warn­er, Hus­ton and co were even­tu­al­ly ordered to return to the Warn­ers back­lot where the film was com­plet­ed – 29 days over sched­ule and sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars over budget.

The fin­ished prod­uct was not what Jack had orig­i­nal­ly imag­ined, but unlike The Lady from Shang­hai, which suf­fered from heavy stu­dio edits, Warn­er con­ced­ed, recog­nis­ing the films great­ness. Pri­vate­ly he pred­i­cat­ed it would be a flop – and it was. Unsure of how to mar­ket the film, the stu­dio set­tled on play­ing up the west­ern and adven­ture ele­ments, but it ulti­mate­ly failed to find a wide enough audi­ence and recouped only a frac­tion of its bloat­ed bud­get. The Acad­e­my were ful­ly behind it, how­ev­er, twice recog­nis­ing Hus­ton at the 1949 Oscars and award­ing Hus­ton Sr the sup­port­ing actor gong. Hollywood’s first father and son win­ning combination.

No such reward for Bog­a­rt though, whose Fred C Dobbs rep­re­sent­ed the antithe­sis of his screen per­sona – a char­ac­ter per­haps too dar­ing for its time but now wide­ly recog­nised as one of the actor’s finest achieve­ments. Bog­a­rt rel­ished the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play a down and dirty anti­hero, grad­u­al­ly grow­ing more filthy and unkempt so that by film’s end there doesn’t appear to be any inch of him that isn’t cov­ered in dirt or sweat. As he descends into mad­ness, grad­u­al­ly con­sumed by para­noia and an insa­tiable lust for gold, his hair becomes a tan­gled mess and his face rodent-like in appear­ance; gaunt and hol­low-eyed with a dement­ed toothy grin. Bogart’s total com­mit­ment in cre­at­ing this tru­ly despi­ca­ble char­ac­ter alien­at­ed his fan­base, who had come to see ​‘Bogie’ not the mon­strous Dobbs.

The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre is a tech­ni­cal tour de force, too. Hus­ton keeps his cam­era fair­ly restrained, com­ple­ment­ing the action while slow­ly and sub­tly build­ing a sense of unease. To begin with the film’s visu­al style is rel­a­tive­ly uncom­pli­cat­ed, with Hus­ton employ­ing wide lens­es and bright day­light, but as events progress he adds in more night scenes. This is when the film is at its dark­est, fig­u­ra­tive­ly and lit­er­al­ly. Fire pro­vides the main light source and shad­ows con­strict the frame as the sto­ry takes on a noir like qual­i­ty. The back­ground becomes blurred and the edges of the frame become increas­ing­ly warped. Hus­ton fills the nar­row 1:33:1 (4:3) frame with close-ups, show­ing char­ac­ters’ faces glis­ten­ing with sweat, their eyes glow­ing as their men­tal states unravel.

Stan­ley Kubrick named The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre among his favourite films, its dra­mat­ic end­ing clear­ly mir­rored in his 1956 film The Killing where Ster­ling Hay­den is blown away into the night like gold dust. George Lucas and Steven Spiel­berg also took inspi­ra­tion, bor­row­ing Dobbs’ fedo­ra and unshaven look for Indi­ana Jones and chan­nelling Ted McCord’s noir-tinged cin­e­matog­ra­phy. Paul Thomas Ander­son watched it sev­er­al times while writ­ing There Will Be Blood, anoth­er atmos­pher­ic dra­ma about the cor­rupt­ing pow­er of gold (or rather liq­uid gold). The open­ing shot of a moun­tain range instant­ly evokes Huston’s film, sug­gest­ing that Daniel Plain­view is about to under­take a sim­i­lar jour­ney. Sev­en­ty years on from its orig­i­nal release, The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra still man­ages to slow­ly worm its way under the skin, cre­at­ing a feel­ing of achro­mat­ic anx­i­ety from its very first frame.