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By
NICK ZEGARAC
"The Treasure of Sierra
Madre" is a story of greed, deception, murder and
adventure -- and that's just for starters. It
stars Humphrey Bogart as Fred Dobbs, a reprobate
who eschews the work ethic at every turn for a
handout or the prospect of getting rich quickly.
Naturally, with a prospect from an old codger,
Howard (Walter Huston) that Dobbs and another
greed-driven young hopeful, Bob Curtin (Tim Holt)
stake out their claim for gold in the mountains.
But the journey to rich rewards is marred by
Fred's paranoia that everyone is trying to steal
from him. This fear ultimately leads Fred to
mistrust both his partners and he actually
attempts to kill Bob in the middle of the desert.
The betrayal backfires for all involved, with the
treasure remaining an elusive mirage. John Huston
masterfully directs and costars in a cameo, in
this gritty and thrilling action adventure and
drama!
Warner gives us a cleaned-up but very inconsistent
transfer. There are a few problems worth noting,
including aliasing and shimmering of fine details
that crop up and detract from the visual
presentation. There's also a bit of pixelization
and some edge enhancement. But the grayscale has
been nicely balanced and fine details are
beautifully rendered. You won't believe this film
is over 60 years old! One aside: approximately two
thirds into the film, at the point where Fred
almost kills Bob in the desert, the image quality
suddenly spirals into a third generation looking
print quality that is totally out of sync with the
rest of the video presentation. There's an
incredible amount of excessive film grain and
age-related artifacts. This poor video quality is
never explained on either the film's audio
commentary track or the documentary that is
included on the making of the film so I, in turn,
am at a total loss to explain it myself. At best I
have to assume that no first generation print
master was available for this portion of the film,
hence other film sources were considered and
ultimately utilized to make the film whole again.
The audio is mono but well balanced.
Extras include documentaries on both the film and
the career of John Huston, featurettes, audio
commentaries, trailers and a stills gallery. Very
handsomely mounted and very thoughtfully put
together. My hat off to the good people at Warner
Brothers! |
