The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Here's a review on IMDB that bugged me, especially for its criticism of old style acting.

HOW TIMES CHANGE (from 2000)

"I recently started re-viewing films with an eye toward earnest evaluation, as much for self-examination as anything. By selecting this film, I wanted to find something special. So it is with regret that I post a negative comment amidst a field of glowing praise. I can only think that the difference is that tastes have changed -- more, the bar has been raised. And that's sufficiently interesting to report. Why doesn't this movie work for me, and probably would have 35 years ago? (In fact, I think it did!)

What we have here is good acting by Howard and Gold Hat, a book as source with an adventurous theme for the time, and clear but not artistic cinematography. By today's standards, the sets are cheesy, Bogart's acting isn't real, and the story is scattered.

About Bogart's acting. This was right before Brando (and many since) changed our expectations of the art forever. I never lost the awareness that the lines were written (they were just too clean) and that Bogart was acting. His affect was never real. Imagine Harvey Keitel, or even Tony Hopkins in the role, and you'll see what I mean. We've evolved a completely different standard of acting. We seek more immediacy to the emotional bone, more intimacy with the soul. For that matter, look at the `modern' acting of John Huston in `Chinatown,' to see how thoroughly even he changed his ideas about acting.

About the story, can you imagine a scriptwriter today spending so much energy on events which neither advance the story nor increase definition of the characters? The real story setup is the `prisoner's dilemma' where what's best for an individual in a group trumps the best interests of the group (and hence all its members). Fairness fights paranoia. The lengthy prologue of being cheated could have -- with work -- supported this setup. But it doesn't! So many things could have been mutually supporting (like the letter to the wife, the rescue from the mine that wasn't really a rescue). But the standard of the era didn't require this. So the story appears scattered, unconnected to a contemporary audience.

I believe that the film continues to be ranked high based on rememberance that it DID work when new, that it WAS important in its time, and that we wish to honor a past that has passed. Oh, that and the `stinkin' badges.'

A classic is timeless. This film is not."


***
First of all, yes Howard and Gold Hat are great but it is unfair to compare them to Dobbs since he has the most screen time. We only get to see Gold Hat for a few scenes-how would it have been if he was in the film for almost 2 hours?
Bogart has much more to do emotionally than Huston too. Huston is the wise old miner. He never wavers in that role. Similarly Holt remains the same from beginning to end. But Bogart has to go from beggar to miner to gold-crazy.
Not a small undertaking.
I actually would argue that we first see him he is the most convincing bum of the three. He talks like someone of a rough and limited educational background. Holt is just as theatrical, and Huston is reciting his lines with as much preparation.

I would love to make this bet. I would bet that if you had Bogart as Dobbs show up in a 1970s or 80s or 90s movie starring Keitel or Hopkins, audience members would be glued on Bogart, even if they never saw or heard him before.

What people mean by modern acting involves a more generous use of closeups and changes in sound engineering, as well as less forceful speaking. I think it has less to do with theatrical presentation and more to do with vocal strength. Bogart and Huston had a strong way of talking. Their voices projected.

I don't see what the reviewer means by John Huston's acting style in Chinatown. It doesn't appear out of sync with his appearance in Sierra Madre except that he is much older in Chinatown.