100 Days, 100 Movies: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Director: John Huston
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt

“I know what gold does to men’s souls,” the old man says in this film that looks like a western, but plays like the deepest of psychological dramas. Writer/director John Huston perfectly balances a narratively intimate character study with larger than life entertainment and in the process gives Humphrey Bogart the best character he’d ever play. Greed, paranoia, treachery, action, adventure and madness are all woven seamlessly together in this one of a kind film.

Bogart, Walter Huston and Tim Holt star as Dobbs, Howard and Curtin, three Americans who set off into the mountains of Tampico, Mexico to make their fortune in gold. Of the three, only Howard is an experienced prospector, a man whose exuberant eccentricities hide an observant, knowledgeable person. Before they’ve even set off, he pretty well knows how things will turn out, his words laced with warning. “As long as there’s no find, the noble brotherhood will last, but when the piles of gold begin to grow, that’s when the trouble starts.” Given his past experiences, it’s a wonder that he goes at all, but the promise of gold is enough to overcome any misgivings and, besides, he knows that without him, Dobbs and Curtin would be done for.

True to Howard’s prophesy, the partnership begins to go sour once they start to find gold. Dobbs, in particular, insists on dividing the loot at the end of each day, rather than simply dividing the money after they’ve returned to civilization. It’s here that the film begins to seem claustrophobic, giving us more frequent close-ups, having the characters occupy smaller spaces together and letting the camera close in tightly on them (many shots are set-up to make it look as if the three are practically standing on each other so that it seems as if there’s not enough room for all three and the camera on what is meant to be a wide-open mountain). The paranoia implied by immediately separating the shares is increased by the fact that all three hide their shares at the end of each day, making them naturally suspicious whenever one of the others disappears on some unexplained errand. In one scene, Curtin accidentally comes across Dobbs’ share, almost leading to a showdown between the two.

Besides having to contend with their own psychological turmoil, the trio is in for more grief with the arrival of Cody (Bruce Bennett), a fellow American who meets Curtain when he goes back to town for supplies and then follows him back up the mountain and tries to muscle his way into the operation. Shortly after Cody come a gang of bandits and the film’s most famous line: “Badges? We ain’t got no badges! We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!” Cody is killed by the bandits, who are run off by the approach of the Federalis, and Dobbs, Curtain and Howard are free to make their way back to town with their loot. After Howard is separated from them, Dobbs’ madness takes over and he kills Curtin (or so he thinks), determined to make off with all the money himself, not stopping to think that it might not be such a good idea for a man to try to make his way through bandit country on his own.

While the film can function on the level of pure escapist entertainment, it also functions on a deeper level, where it exposits an anti-Colonialist/anti-Capitalist message. The pursuit of wealth – specifically of wealth to be hoarded by one person – is characterized not only as bad, but as dangerous, and the act of foreigners coming into a place and staking a claim where they have no right is shown to be futile. Aside from the fact that Dobbs is willing to kill anyone who comes between him and the loot, there’s also the fact that Dobbs and Curtain are brought together in the first place by McCormick (Barton MacLane), a fellow American who cons them into working his oil field and then attempts to cheat them out of the money owed to them. But the trio isn’t really better than McCormick, because they, too, engage in shifty behaviour in order to retain something that isn’t rightfully theirs. They have no real claim to the gold in the mountains, a fact which they fully admit to each other and which necessitates disguising the mine and camping elsewhere to make it look like they’re just hunters. However, the knowledge that the gold isn’t rightfully theirs doesn’t stop them from taking it, or from being willing to kill anyone who comes near it. In Dobbs' descent into madness we see played out on a smaller scale the greedy, brutal mentality of every Colonialist expedition to enter a foreign place and slaughter whomever was in the way in order to secure land and goods. When the gold is found dumped on the ground and being swept back into the mountains by the wind, Howard is right to laugh because it’s only fitting. It was never “their” gold and now it’s being returned to where it belongs.

Of the three main actors, Huston was the only one to be nominated for an Academy Award (which he won). Bogart would have been equally deserving, fully committing to Dobbs’ descent into insanity and desperation (regardless of what Dobbs has done beforehand, it’s difficult not to feel for him when he’s cornered by the bandits at the end and attempts to talk his way out of it), delivering soliloquies which attempt to justify what he’s done and convince himself that he’ll get away with it. As Curtin, Tim Holt has an unfortunate role, stuck as he is between these two giants of characters. However, he does a serviceable job, acting as the balance between the two extremes played by Huston and Bogart. As a director, Huston only makes one misstep, and that’s in showing Howard’s time in the Indian village, which completely detracts from the tone the film has built up until that point. It’s a scene that belongs in a different movie and it’s jarring to see it played out here. But, leaving that aside, what Huston delivers here is a taut, effective psychological drama that has been often imitated, but will never be surpassed.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Dodsworth (1936)

Director: William Wyler
Starring: Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, Mary Astor

If your only familiarity with Walter Huston is through The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Dodsworth might come as a shock to you. In fact, Dodsworth is a film that is kind of shocking regardless. A thoroughly adult story about a middle-aged couple discovering that they aren’t so compatible, after all, this is a film that approaches its characters with such candour and sincerity that it’s like a breath of fresh air. It isn’t the most technically innovative film, and it’s influence can’t be read in a thousand films that followed it, but as pure character study, I can think of few films that can top it.

It begins with Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston), an automobile tycoon taking his last look around his office before retiring. His employees look upon him with reverence as he says his goodbyes and makes his exit, and we’re already aware that he’s not your typical millionaire. He’s not a faceless money-grubber or a tyrannical despot who will do anything to maintain his power and influence. Instead, he’s the most average of Joes, a regular guy who would fit in easily with his employees, were it not for the fact that he’s worth millions. Following his final day at work, he and his wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton), leave for Europe and we see more of Dodsworth’s “everyman” qualities in the way that he’s thrilled not by the fact that he’s about to experience the decadence that Europe has to offer, but instead by the mere fact that he’s crossing the ocean and seeing things he’s never seen before.

Dodsworth’s excitement, demonstrated here in his desire to wait up on deck as they approach the land so that he can see it, is undercut by the first signs of distress in his marriage. We see Fran beginning to distance herself from him, embarrassed by what she sees as his provinciality. He may be a millionaire – self-made, no doubt – but she obviously sees herself as coming from a higher social caste then him and makes it clear that she finds his ways unsophisticated as she aligns herself with a fellow passenger, the British Captain Lockert (David Niven), who embodies the type of person – charming, refined, and most certainly above being excited by the fact of seeing a light that is the first sign of land – she wants to be associated with. She and Lockert flirt and seem on the verge of having an affair, until he realizes that she’s in over her head and makes it apparent to her that he thinks she’s just as provincial as her husband. It’s the worst kind of insult for Fran, whose humiliation will lead her into two affairs before she's finally able to work herself up to leaving her husband.

The break comes while the pair are touring Austria, when Fran and the much younger Baron Kurt Von Obersdorf (Gregory Gaye) fall into an affair and Fran decides to throw Dodsworth over for her new man. Dodsworth lets her go and wanders aimlessly around Europe, seeing things for the sake of seeing things but not really enjoying them, until he runs into Edith Cortright (Mary Astor), an acquaintance from the journey across the Atlantic, and falls in love himself. However, before the Dodsworths’ divorce can be finalized, Fran comes running back, her plans to marry Kurt having been thwarted by his mother (played marvellously by Maria Ouspenskaya). Dodsworth is willing to give his marriage another chance until he realizes that Fran hasn’t changed at all, that she’s learned nothing about herself from these events, and that she hasn’t grown to appreciate him or their marriage any more than she did before she left him. Fran is the sort of character that you really want to see get her comeuppance – she’s vain and flighty and completely unwilling to take responsibility for her own actions (the withering look that Dodsworth fixes on her when she explains to him that her affair with Kurt was partly his fault is a thing of beauty) – and Dodsworth delivers by allowing her to be thoroughly served not once, but twice, first by the Baroness and then by Dodsworth himself.

Huston is fantastic as Dodsworth, playing this simple, ordinary guy in a very simple, no-frills kind of way. Through Huston, Dodsworth isn’t simply a character, but a man with character who exudes without having to say as much, that the qualities he values most are hard work and loyalty. Because he values loyalty, he’s willing to give Fran another chance, and because he’s such a strong character, he doesn’t seem wimpy for it. It’s also important that Dodsworth, while not necessarily a man of the world in the sense of being well-travelled, is a very intelligent man who is able to assess the situation clearly enough to know that his loyalty isn’t valued, but taken for granted, and that it’s time to call it a day. As Fran, Ruth Chatterton shines in what is an unforgiving role, playing as she does the film’s “villain,” if a film like this can be thought of as having a villain. However, there’s enough shading to her character that, even though you want her to get knocked down, you still feel sorry for her. She’s a woman clinging desperately to her youth, perhaps all the more fiercely because the Dodsworths’ daughter is about to make them grandparents. “You’re simply rushing at old age, Sam, and I’m not ready for that yet,” she tells her husband. Given how society tends to value women less the older they get, it’s easy to understand why she feels so much anxiety about aging, even though that doesn’t excuse the way she treats Dodsworth.

Dodsworth may very well be the most underrated American film ever made. I’ve never seen it included in any Top 100 and I’ve yet to meet anyone else who’s heard of it, let alone seen it. Perhaps because, like its title character, it is so simple, so straightforward, that it’s bound the blend into the background and take a backseat to flashier entertainments. But its simplicity is also what’s kept it fresh, and while Fran spends the movie worrying about getting older, the movie itself hasn’t aged a bit.