The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Directed by

John Huston

Genre

drama film, Western film, contemporary Western film, treasure hunt film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h 06m

Rated

NR

Rating

8.0 of 10 from 1,361 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Two poor men in Mexico team up with an old prospector to search for gold in the mountains. As they find fortune, greed and paranoia tear them apart.

grittytensesuspensefulbleakatmosphericslow-burnmorally ambiguousunsettling

What happens

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a 1948 American neo-western film written and directed by John Huston, and starring Humphrey Bogart, with Walter Huston, Tim Holt, and Bruce Bennett in support. Based on B. Traven's 1927 novel of the same name, the film follows two downtrodden men who join forces with a grizzled old prospector in searching for gold in Mexico. John Huston developed an interest in adapting Traven's novel in 1935. Development of the film began in 1941, shortly after the release of The Maltese Falcon, but was delayed by American entry into World War II and Huston's Army service. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was one of the early Hollywood productions to be shot on location outside the United States, with extensive location shooting in Mexico, as well as back in the US. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, the film premiered in Los Angeles on 14 January 1948. It was both a critical and commercial success, winning three Academy Awards - Best Director and Best Screenplay for John Huston, and Best Supporting Actor for Walter Huston - the first time a father and son both won Oscars for the same film. It also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film and the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture. The film continues to be highly regarded by critics and audiences, sometimes referred to as Huston's magnum opus and one of the greatest films of all time. In 1990, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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