By Lee Pfeiffer
John Huston's 1948 screen adaptation of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre has been released by Warner Home Video on Blu-ray. The presentation is stunning and the crisp black-and-white cinematography has never looked so entrancing. The film is regarded as one of the great triumphs of American cinema, but was a box-office flop at the time, despite winning Oscars for Huston and his father, Walter. Apparently, audiences didn't want to see Humphrey Bogart stray so far from his image as a lovable crook or detective. Yet, Bogart gives the greatest performance of his career in this film, though he was criminally denied a Best Actor nomination. The story of three men who virtually sell their souls in the quest to find gold in the mountains of Mexico is the ultimate cautionary tale. When they are impoverished, they would give their lives for one another. However, after striking it rich, greed and jealously lead inevitably to tragedy. The story behind the film is almost as engrossing. Huston insisted on shooting much of the movie on location in the wilds of Mexico, which was quite innovative at the time. The resulting budget increase made the film a costly venture for Warner Brothers. Additionally, Huston's attempts to meet with the book's author, the legendarily mysterious B. Traven, caused endless speculation. The man on the set during production who claimed to represent the elusive Traven may well have been the author himself, and books have been written debating this possibility.