What a profound pleasure to experience a great film like this. Whether one can classify this as a western is debatable. By the second reel of the picture we're in the Mexican mountains and deserts except it's the 1920s. Bogart and his companions have side-holstered revolvers. There's Mexican revolutionary bandits on horseback. And the setting is a gold mining camp. A lot of this says "Western" and feels like it often, just not at all a traditional one. I guess if The Professionals can be a western, so can this. In the opening scenes of the Mexican town of Tampico, it feels more like an urban noir or Casablanca. The first reel takes time to show the misfortunes of Bogart as a vagrant down on his luck scraping by with odd jobs and panhandling.

Bogart and his friend played by Tim Holt meet Walter Huston (the director's father), an ex-miner in a flophouse who tells them about gold prospecting. The three set off for Mexico and Huston takes the father-mentor figure, showing the boys the ropes. Over time the story takes a darker tone with the theme of greed and paranoia taking center place. Bogart and Holt hide their gold, worrying about the other stealing it. Walter Huston is rather disassociated from these concerns, the only one not tainted by gold lust. The gold takes the form of placer gold: the unrefined gold dust that looks like sand, but when packed in bags is worth its weight in.. well gold.

A Texan prospector (Bruce Bennett) finds their camp and the suspense ratchets up. The boys hold a vote to kill him, but as they pull a gun, Mexican bandits approach the camp. We get the famous scene of the Mexican bandito leader who is asked to show his federales badge. He doesn't actually say "We don't need no stinkin' badges" as misquoted in Scarface. Rather, the quote is: "Badges? We ain't got no badges. I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges." A gunfight ensues and Bennett is killed. The boys find a letter in his pocket penned by his wife. It moves Holt and Huston so much they agree to give part of their share to Bennett's family, but Bogart declines to share his.

When the boys make their journey back to town, the film takes a German expressionist turn. Huston is called away by local villagers to help a sick boy, so it's just Bogart and Holt traveling together. The mental deterioration of Bogart signifies impending tragedy and the acting intensity is astonishing. In one shot Bogart looks demonically possessed, his craggy face contorted with shadows and chiaroscuro. He's lost his mind and the two men stay awake at night, Bogart waiting for an opportunity to turn the tables and Holt worried for his own life. Inevitably Bogart wins the attrition and shoots Holt off screen. We assume he's dead, but he crawls away wounded.

Bogart's performance must have been frightening for audiences in the 40s, as he succumbs to delusions and his anxiety reaches a fevered pitch. The tragedy is complete when a desperate Bogart reaches the outskirts of town and is ambushed at a waterhole by the Mexican bandito leader. It's a somber scene with violence a hair's breadth away. We know Bogie is doomed and it's disturbing when he's killed off screen. The bandits mistake the bags on the mules as sand to weigh down the pelts the miners used to camouflage the mule packs. So the bandits empty the bags and the wind scatters the gold dust.

Holt and Huston track Bogart's location and discover his body and the empty sacks. Strong winds gust around them, the gold particles scintillating in the air like fairy dust in surreal fashion. Huston realizes what happened and laughs maniacally. Holt joins in the laughter. It's all an absurd farce and cruel trick of the universe. Despite this dark journey of the soul and a parable against greed, the film ends with a smidgeon of hope. Huston returns to the village and accepts his role as healer, and he encourages Holt to seek out Bennett's widow. The movie ends with an empty bag on screen next to a cactus. This is great filmmaking by John Huston and one of his best films in a pantheon of many (Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, and The African Queen). The story structure and themes have the granitic qualities of a work of literature. This fable of avarice is one of the bleakest films of the period, memorably directed and acted. I still don't know if it comfortably belongs in the genre of the western because it's just such a universe apart from Shane or Rio Bravo. But boy is it one of the best classics ever made.