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There's Gold in Them There Hills by Bruce Cantwell Dobbs and Curtin sit around a campfire beneath a menacing, twisted tree. Dobbs: (He laughs.) I'll tell you what. I'll make you a little bet. Three times thirty-five is a hundred and five. I'll bet ya a hundred and five thousand dollars you go to sleep before I do. We realize along with Curtin that Dobbs has gone insane. That laughter cuts the film in two. We have watched all the steps that contribute to the madness and follow the disease's consequences on Dobbs's partners and himself. On its own, Humphrey Bogart's slowly growing paranoia would have been memorable. In the context of a first rate adventure tale, it is unforgettable. John Huston has a feel for Mexico in his bones: its oil boom towns and its wilderness. He never trivializes the native tongue with subtitles. If we don't understand the language, we must rely upon sometimes unreliable translators. Huston knows how to make us feel like strangers in this strange land. From the opening scene when Dobbs goes begging a meal from a fellow American, we are with him, feeling his poverty, his humiliation, his vulnerability and his fear. When he teams with Curtin and later Howard, the old prospector, we grow to understand that his life has been so hard that he wants to be rich for all the wrong reasons and when he finally has what has been denied him, it proves too much for his soul. Dobbs is no Indiana Jones, stealing a fortune away from the natives while swinging on a vine. Every ounce of gold he and his partners take from the mountain is earned through hard labor. The only difference between working here and slaving away on an oil rig is that the pay is better here. On the other hand, so are the risks. The partners can't afford to stake their claim because they suspect the local officials are corrupt. They can't expect protection from the bandits who roam the hills looking for firearms. They are truly alone in the wilderness with only their internalized civilization to guide them. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre basks in gritty, grimy hyperreality. Huston seeks no suspension of disbelief on our part. There's nothing about this movie that feels like a commercial venture. There is no throwaway love interest, no unbelievable twists of fate. But for a work of artistic integrity, it's one hell of an entertaining yarn!

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