The characters in Huston movies hardly ever achieve what they’re aiming for. Sam Spade, in The Maltese Falcon, Huston’s first film, ends up minus one partner and one woman he thought he could trust. Everyone is a loser in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and the gold blows back into the dust and is lost in it. Ahab, in Moby Dick. Marlon Brando’s career army officer in Reflections in a Golden Eye, even Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen—they all fall short of their plans. The African Queen does have a happy ending, but it feels tacked-on and ridiculous, and the Queen destroys itself in
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