The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a film whose pleasures lie in the ‘how’ as opposed to the ‘what.’ Not long into the movie, Howard (Walter Huston) spells out the plot in broad strokes: “Never knew a prospector yet that died rich … going with a partner or two is dangerous. Murder's always lurkin' about. Partners accusin' each other of all sorts of crimes … as long as there's no find, the noble brotherhood will last, but when the piles of gold begin to grow, that's when the trouble starts.”
The movie then unfolds with all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy (with Howard doing Cassandra one better, because not even he heeds his own prediction). The story’s destination thus secured, writer/director John Huston doesn’t rush headlong for the finish line; on the contrary, he takes the time to establish the characters and the situation at his leisure, with lots of patience and a smattering of humor (including a scene where Bogie throws water in the face of an infant Robert Blake).
After the three protagonists – Howard, Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), and Bob Curtin (Tim Holt) – climb up the titular mountains and Dobbs climbs down from sanity, everything goes pretty much according to Howard’s forecast – which is to say, spectacularly wrong, but spectacular nonetheless; Dobbs becomes paranoid and delusional, convinced that the other two are either going to stab him in the back or ambush him down the line – but never just shoot him on the spot, because they are “yellow.”
Even at his most heroic, Bogie had an underlying mean streak; Rick Blaine is a cynical, bitter drunk who is, as one can only be in the movies, Saved by the Love of a Good Woman (even if he doesn’t Get the Girl in the End), and Sam Spade is always looking out for No. 1. It’s in films like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (see also Conflict, In a Lonely Place) that he lets loose that inner darkness which he only taps into elsewhere, and his descent into madness remains the best part of a great movie (and even then Huston finds room for humor, such as when Dobbs asks an interloper “who’s not civilized?!” right before sucker punching him).
