Fred C. Dobbs and Bob Curtin, both down on their luck in Tampico, Mexico in 1925, meet up with a grizzled prospector named Howard and decide to join with him in search of gold in the wilds of central Mexico. Through enormous difficulties, they eventually succeed in finding gold, but bandits, the elements, and most especially greed threaten to turn their success into disaster. —IMDb
Adventure in many forms is the theme of many of John Huston’s films. His characters are constantly searching for “the stuff that dreams are made of” (the famous closing-line of his debut film The Maltese Falcon). Huston glorified this chase despite its frequent disillusionment and false promise, since it represented a flight from the complacent virtues of ordinary life. Like Ernest Hemingway and Joseph Conrad, Huston regarded civilization as a false surface which thinly veiled a hostile nature. Only those who lived at the edge, on the margins of society were regarded by Huston as fellow travellers. In films as diverse as The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle and Under the Volcano, Huston celebrated men who circled the abyss; characters who are driven to plunge head first into the void.
The son of the great theatre and film actor Walter Huston (who would win an Oscar under his son’s direction for his role in The Treasure of Sierra Madre) and crime journalist Rhea Gore… read more
Alongside Welles' Citizen Kane & Magnificent Ambersons, I would nominate Treasure of the Sierra Madre as the greatest film of the '40s. Bogart at his best, Huston's finest film, and one of the best American movies ever made.
Senses of Cinema editor Rolando Caputo introduces the new issue: "For some time now, Senses has wanted to publish an English language translation
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John Huston’s “The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre,” is an adventure film in which the pursuit made is not an end in itself but the excuse for a fatalistic… read review
Director John Huston makes a small cameo at the beginning of his 1948 masterpiece. He plays a gentleman repeatedly asked for money by the penniless Fred C. Dobbs. With his commanding presence, he… read review
In a career of adapting difficult novels to the big screen, John Huston hardly found a text more apt to his sensibilities than B. Traven’s “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, a scorching 1927 anti… read review
If The Maltese Falcon was Huston’s film about greed, then this film is about Greed with a capital G. It may the definitive film on the cancerous and corrupting influence of the American dream, namely… read review