Anna Daniels
Thanks to the current era’s obsession with algorithmizing literally anything no matter when it occurred, we can point to the best critical success of the Western genre: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. This 1948 classic was obliged to garner glowing reviews due to the inclusion of Humphrey Bogart in the starring role alone, but it has stood the test of time, reigning at a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes with 46 reviews scattered across the half-century-plus since its theatrical release. It’s set in the ’20s, well past the epoch of horse-driven carriages, gunslingers, and the time when the West was empty, but it has all the hallmarks nonetheless: outlaws, gold prospecting, wild and barren landscapes where lone wolves save two-bit dusty frontier towns and become beloved.
Sierra Madre features no white hats or even gray ones to save the day: it’s a parable about greed, and its targets are the subject of accurate karmic suffering. The great Roger Ebert described it best in his own glowing review when he revisited it on the then-still-new medium of DVD in 2004: “There is a pitiless stark realism in these scenes that brings the movie to honesty and truth. Leading up to them is a down-market Shakespearean soliloquy when Dobbs thinks he is a murderer and says, ‘Conscience. What a thing! If you believe you got a conscience, it’ll pester you to death. But if you don’t believe you got one, what could it do to ya?’ He finds out.”
Written by: Looper
