The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) follows three broke Americans in Mexico who go looking for gold. They find it. The film's actual subject begins after that: whether they can trust each other. John Huston directed and cast his father Walter Huston as the old prospector Howard. Walter won Best Supporting Actor and John won both Best Director and Best Screenplay. It was the first time a father and son won Oscars for the same film. Humphrey Bogart's Fred C. Dobbs is the least likeable role of his career, and that was the point; he was known for heroes at the time and here he plays a man rotting from the inside. The film cost 2.5 million dollars and took roughly 4.1 million in total, which was not a bright result for the studio. Its most quoted line, the one about badges, has become one of the most consistently misquoted sentences in film history. It runs 126 minutes. Good for: classic Hollywood, stories about greed, and an unfamiliar side of Bogart. Less good for: most of the Mexican characters are written to the conventions of the period and some of it plays badly now. The pace is slow, the third act is long, and the ending leans hard on its irony.