Dust in the wind

#39 - 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre feels at once like the kind of thing that might have been first performed at the Ancient Theater in Delphi and also the kind of thing that might have prompted Hollywood to draw up a blacklist in the first place.

It is a morality play—a strident indictment of the vacuousness and violence of greed—but it is also a statement about the depravity built in to certain flavors of capitalism.

Before the gold starts to tear them apart, Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), Howard (Walter Huston), and Curtin (Tim Holt) sit around their campfire and discuss the plans they have for their score. Dobbs and Curtin—an unlikely pair from the start, brought together by shared desperation—are perfectly juxtaposed. Curtin talks about buying a peach farm, speaking in romantic terms about the hard work it takes to nurture something that will eventually bear fruit.

“Must be grand watching your own trees put on leaves, come into blossom and bear. Watching the fruit get big and ripe on the boughs, ready for pickin’,” he says.

Dobbs meanwhile can only think in terms of consumption. There will be a visit to the baths, clothing, fine dining, and maybe women. One thing you can do with wealth is buy yourself the time and space to live the kind of life you want. Another thing you can do is accumulate.

Yes, this sequence foreshadows which of the characters is most likely to teeter. But it also presents alternate visions of the world as it could be along with a clear value judgment about which vision is worth pursuing. We can go skin deep, or we can sink our hands deep in to the soil. Both strains of philosophy have found favor in America.

Ultimately, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre asks us to consider how much is enough, and it does double duty in that regard—weighing that question for individuals and the collective alike.

It is far more direct where individuals are concerned. The degradation of Dobbs leaves little doubt about where it stands on what greed does to the soul of a single man. Bogart embodies unbridled desperation, and, paradoxically, becomes more and more outwardly and visibly desperate the less precarious his situation becomes. He starts out sleeping on park benches and in flop houses. Yet, he looks and sounds far more crazed once he has all of the gold to himself.

The disheveled appearance and muttering to himself only really peak once Howard and Curtin are no longer obstacles. As if to leave us with no doubt, some of the final images director John Huston flashes of Dobbs are his face dissolving in to the flames of a campfire hours after he thinks he has killed Curtin and then his prostrate, terrified reflection in the water when the bandidos catch up to him. Some good his paranoia and greed has done him.

Though the film is less explicit in its societal indictment of greed, it still has a clear perspective from start to finish. Consider the derision and contempt that Dobbs is treated with by a fellow American when he is panhandling in Tampico at the start of the film. Or how about the bandidos who rob from and murder Dobbs in the end, offering a simple justification for their viciousness. “We need money, too,” they tell him. Or how about the contradictory warnings of Howard before he and Dobbs and Curtin head for the hills hoping to strike it rich.

“I know what gold does to men’s souls,” he tells them with foreboding.

And yet off he, Howard, goes, with very little hesitation. There is a conclusion to Howard’s sentiment that is implied. I know what gold does to men’s souls, but off I must go anyway because there doesn’t seem to be any other way I know of to survive. There is an ugliness to it all. The more naked our pursuit of money, the more barbaric we become—even if the pursuit is successful. Perhaps that is why Bogart’s sunken-eyed mug is such a perfect visage for this story. It is certainly why his character bristles at being accused of being greedy even though he obviously is.

“I just don’t like being called a hog,” he says. “That’s all.”

Sure, my snout is deep in the slop at the bottom of this trough, but don’t you dare tell me I’m covering myself in filth.

There’s a predictable banality to Dobbs, isn’t there? From the moment he demands to keep a hold of his own share of the gold, you know exactly how his story will end. There are flashes of humanity in there, such as when he agrees to break down the sluice with Howard in an act of deference to the mountain that has made them rich. But, mostly, there is a dull emptiness to him—one that can only come to a conclusion when there is nothing left of him at all.

It is his companions that are there to remind us that there is more to life than getting rich. What a contrast it is to bounce from Dobbs’ demise to the execution of the bandidos that killed him to the hysterical laughter of Howard and Curtin when they realize the bandidos never even knew about the gold Dobbs was carrying and, so, scattered it to the literal wind.

Why laugh in the face of a lost fortune? Why not, when those fantasies they shared around the campfire with Dobbs seem within their grasp even with all of their treasure lost.

“You know, the worst ain’t so bad when it finally happens,” says Curtin, once the laughter has died down.

What he really means is that what might seem like the “worst” outcome is actually just a profound failure of the imagination. When we can see beyond what a fortune will do for us personally and in the short term, we can see a great deal more of what the world has to offer.