3. Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Humphrey Bogart is one of the most iconic faces in American cinema. He appeared in several films prior to the 1940s, and his most memorable was probably the backstabbing George Hally in The Roaring Twenties, starring James Cagney. His roles in High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, though, caught the eyes of cinema-goers, but Casablanca propelled him into Hollywood stardom, and he would never be forgotten from then onwards. His droning, choppy delivery, his deadpan expressions, his chain smoking, and most significantly his noble intentions (despite appearing to not care less) towards others turned into his trademark. He became a symbol of the film noir era, and it unsurprised viewers to see him as a hard-boiled detective and wounded antihero. In other words, he became the Bruce Wayne of the generation, before Batman ever transcended the legend radar. When he re-teamed up with John Huston for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, on the other hand, nobody expected the outcome. Humphrey Bogart, naturally top billed and with the largest face and name on the films poster, played a bohemian beggar stuck in Tampico, Mexico. With rags as attire and sporting a beard that could polish a diamond, he looked different albeit not alien. He was an actor after all, and everybody expected that everything would go his way by the ending. It
almost did, and not in a way one could imagine. Bogarts Fred Dobbs was a carnivorous leech injected with lethal doses of greed, and it perplexed viewers how somebody like Bogart could convince us of wearing dollar-signed shades despite representing the heart of Hollywood cinema for almost a decade. A scene that stands out is when he kills and digs Curtins body in order to hide the corpse. His insanity is palpable as he questions whether or not he did so without leaving a shred of evidence, and viewers notice how his rationality and decadence wrestle against one another. The winner is clear when he keeps Curtins portion of gold. It comes as no shock how Paul Thomas Anderson used The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as inspiration for There Will Be Blood. Humphrey Bogarts performance is also criminally ignored, especially when one considers how Walter Huston ended up with the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and Bogart did not even score a nomination.