This quality collection features Raoul Walsh's gritty They Drive By Night, Howard Hawks' underrated To Have And Have Not (with Lauren Bacall's electrifying debut), and, best of all, John Huston's The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre?a grim study of greed, deceit and murder, with Bogart, Tim Holt and the Oscar-winning Walter Huston looking for Mexican gold. Much admired by Peckinpah, Sierra Madre was a signal influence on The Wild Bunch?most obviously in the casting of Edmond O'Brien as Freddie Sykes in a part clearly inspired by Huston's whiskery old prospector. Peckinpah will also have relished the film's caustic humour, and in Bogart's billowing paranoia as the unprincipled and increasingly unhinged Fred C Dobbs there's a fascinating anticipation of Warren Oates losing it badly in Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia.
This quality collection features Raoul Walsh’s gritty They Drive By Night, Howard Hawks’ underrated To Have And Have Not (with Lauren Bacall’s electrifying debut), and, best of all, John Huston’s The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre?a grim study of greed, deceit and murder, with Bogart, Tim Holt and the Oscar-winning Walter Huston looking for Mexican gold.
Much admired by Peckinpah, Sierra Madre was a signal influence on The Wild Bunch?most obviously in the casting of Edmond O’Brien as Freddie Sykes in a part clearly inspired by Huston’s whiskery old prospector. Peckinpah will also have relished the film’s caustic humour, and in Bogart’s billowing paranoia as the unprincipled and increasingly unhinged Fred C Dobbs there’s a fascinating anticipation of Warren Oates losing it badly in Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia.
