The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) on Netflix
Fred C. Dobbs and Bob Curtin are broke in Mexico. A contractor cheats them of their wages, and with an old prospector, Howard, they head for the Sierra Madre to hunt gold.
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Plot summary
In 1925, Fred C. Dobbs and Bob Curtin are two Americans down on their luck in Tampico, Mexico. Labor contractor Pat McCormick hires them to build oil derricks, then disappears without paying them. They run into him at a cantina and get their wages after a fight. Dobbs wins a lottery jackpot, enough to buy supplies. With Howard, an old prospector who says the hills still hold gold, they leave Tampico by train for the interior and head into the Sierra Madre.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film won 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.
- Huston originally wanted to cast Ronald Reagan as James Cody, but Jack L. Warner instead insisted on casting Reagan in another film, and Bruce Bennett was cast in the role.
- Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan has cited the film as one of his personal favorites and has said that Dobbs was a key influence in creating the character of Walter White; a key scene from the film was emulated in "Buyout", the sixth episode of the series' fifth season.
- British actor Daniel Day-Lewis said that his second Oscar-winning performance, as vicious oil baron Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, was heavily inspired by Bogart's portrayal of Fred C. Dobbs.
- John Huston makes a cameo appearance as the white-clad American whom Dobbs twice asks for money, which was his first acting role in a film.
- Gold Hat's response, as written by Huston and delivered by Bedoya, has become famous and is often misquoted as "We don't need no stinking badges!"; in 2005 the quotation was chosen as No. 36 on the American Film Institute list AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes.
- Huston soon found out why the newspaper had skewered his production: when you wanted to do anything in Tampico it was customary to bribe the editor of the newspaper, which the crew had failed to do. Two of Huston's associates, Diego Rivera and Miguel Covarrubias, went to the president of Mexico.
- There has been controversy since the 1949 ceremony because of the academy's choice not to nominate Bogart for the Academy Award for Best Actor, a choice that modern critics and Academy members have since condemned.
