The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (film) consensus reads, "Remade but never duplicated, this darkly humorous morality tale represents John Huston at his finest." John Huston won the Academy Award for Best Director and Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1948 for his work on "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre". Walter Huston, John Huston's father, also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in this film, the first father-son win. The film was nominated for the Best Picture award, but lost to Laurence Olivier's film adaptation of "Hamlet". In 1990, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National
John Huston films are adaptations, and he believes that through his films there was a "cohesive world-view, not only thematically but also stylistically; there is the Huston look". The "Huston look" was also noted by screenwriter James Agee, who adds that this "look proceeds from Huston's sense of what is natural to the eye and his delicate, simple feeling for space relationships." In any case, notes Flint, Huston took "uncommon care to preserve the writer's styles and values ... and sought repeatedly to transpose the interior essence of literature to film with dramatic and visual tension", as he did in "Red Badge