A Favorite Film, “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” With One of the Movies’ Greatest Laughs

I’ve seen “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” many times, yet couldn’t resist watching it again when TCM aired the 1948 film this past Sunday night. It’s a great movie based on the mysterious B. Traven’s 1935 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Its scenes unfold inexorably like the movements of a symphony. Walter Huston (Howard), Bogart (Fred C. Dobbs) and the too-little seen Tim Holt (Curtin) form the amazing core of a powerful cast. Howard is the moral center of the movie, possessing shaman-like wisdom and healing powers. As played by Huston, he also displays one of the most prodigious laughs I’ve ever seen or heard in the movies. At the film’s climax, as it becomes clear that all their dreams of wealth have gone up in dust, he gives vent to a laugh that seems to mock all human vanity and grandiosity, at which point Curtin also sees the cosmic humor in their dashed dreams, and he joins Howard in laughing at the outcome of their quest for riches. I just love their expressions and so took pictures of my TV at that point, with the rest of those photos, and other relevant images, at the bottom of this post.

Walter’s son John Huston, years later seen on-screen as character Noah Cross in “Chinatown” wrote the screenplay of “Treasure” and directed the film, winning an Oscar for each of those, while Walter won the statue for Best Supporting Actor.

Two more great movies with Walter Huston in leading roles are “American Madness” (1932), directed by Frank Capra, where he plays a Depression-era bank president preventing a run on his bank. The film celebrates the welfare of ‘the little people,’ not dissimilar to “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I also love “Gabriel Over the White House” (1933), directed by Gregory LaCava, who also worked with W.C. Fields, where Huston plays the president of the United States. At the outset, his President Hammond is unconcerned about the plight of the masses suffering in the Depression, and (in an evocation of the pleas of the real Bonus Army that FDR faced) he’s planning to crush the protests of the veterans massing outside the White House. However, after sustaining a providential blow to the head in a car accident, he turns over a new leaf and offers succor and hope to the desperate vets.