Thursday, January 12, 2006

No Stinkin' Badges

Precious glittering gold, old dust-covered shoes, what's the difference?

There's a wonderful moment in John Huston's "Treasure of Sierra Madre", a little tragi-comic drama within the main adventure-drama, when two bandits fight over Bogart's shoes. Just like Dobbsie needs the gold, these two poor starving bandits need those shoes. And everything comes undone because of that need.

The amazing screenplay (it won an Oscar for John Huston) not only invokes sympathy for a deplorable character like Dobbs, but also heightens the drama to another level with a minor sequence. Somebody needs the gold, somebody needs the shoes and somebody needs a peach farm to find his happiness. That's what makes us human beings.

Wiki has a nice little entry on the film.

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