The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre

John Huston - 1948
Huston's camera seems remarkably aggressive for its time. Using blocks close to the camera, pushing them then away into the distance. His directorial style is often a close on an object, then a fast track out, or going from a wider view in.
Largely, apart from these elements, the direction is pretty simple stuff. Static stagings of sitting around campfires, shot and reverse not so much of dialogue, but of people.
The mvoie is pictorially fine. To my mind not enough is made of it, but in the town there is some nice expressionist stuff with shadows, and in the desert, of we don't really see anything of interest in the location, the high-key light works well.
There is a deep problem here, in that the film is largely people telling each other how they feel, what's going on. There isn't really a lot of visual evocation of this. This means that mood changes happen too quickly, don't seem justified, seem skipped and unreal. There isn't much of a sense of feelings, or intermingling with the landscape. It is really character actors doing their job pretty ostentatiously in an exotic location.
This is 'pre-Bresson' filmmaking; there isn't much of a sense of life, just actors talking about it. Some non-narrative shots might have helped.