The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Director:

John Sturges

Writer:

William Roberts (screenplay)

Release Date:

23 October 1960 (USA)

Genre:

Western | Adventure | Drama

Tagline:

They were seven - And they fought like seven hundred!

Plot:

An oppressed Mexican peasant village assembles seven gunfighters to help defend their homes.

Plot Keywords:

Village | Bandit | Showdown | Farmer | Peasant

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 1 win & 2 nominations

Cast

Yul Brynner	...	Chris Adams
Eli Wallach	...	Calvera
Steve McQueen	...	Vin
Charles Bronson	...	Bernardo O'Reilly
Robert Vaughn	...	Lee
Brad Dexter	...	Harry Luck
James Coburn	...	Britt
Horst Buchholz	...	Chico
Jorge Martínez de Hoyos	...	Hilario (as Jorge Martinez de Hoyas)
Vladimir Sokoloff	...	Old man
Rosenda Monteros	...	Petra
Rico Alaniz	...	Sotero
Pepe Hern
Natividad Vacío	...	Miguel (as Natividad Vacio)
Mario Navarro	...	Boy with O'Reilly

Runtime:

128 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Canada:PG (Manitoba/Ontario) | Canada:G (Nova Scotia/Quebec) | Australia:PG (TV rating) (2005) | Australia:PG | Netherlands:6 (DVD rating) | USA:Approved (certificate #19668) | West Germany:12 (f) | Brazil:12 | Argentina:13 | Australia:M (TV rating) | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 | Sweden:15 | UK:PG

Filming Locations:

Churubusco Studios, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico

Company:

Mirisch Corporation, The

Trivia:

James Coburn was a big fan of Shichinin no samurai (1954) and his favorite role in that film was the character that he ended up playing in the Americanized version.

Goofs:

Continuity: In the opening scene, when Calvera is complaining about religion, he takes the cup to drink in his left hand. As he sits at the table and finishes complaining, the cup is switches to his right hand.

Quotes:

Chamlee: I'm sorry, friend, but there'll be no funeral.
Henry: What?
Chamlee: Oh, the grave is dug and the defunct there is as ready as the embalmers ought to make him. But there'll be no funeral.
Henry: What's the matter? Didn't I pay enough?
Chamlee: It's not a question of money. For twenty dollars, I'd plant anybody with a hoop and a holler. But the funeral is off.
Henry: Now how do you like that. I want him buried, you want him buried and if he could sit up and talk, he'd second the motion. Now that's as unanimous as you can get.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Insecticidal (2005)

A classic all right

Re-make are seldom as good as the original, but here Hollywood or rather John Sturges managed to capture some of the spirit of Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' which itself owes something to the 'Three Musketeers' and which Sturges duly acknowledged in the credits. Partly this is due to some inspired casting. With the exception of Yul Brynner, none of the actors was particularly well known at the time. Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, Eli Wallach and Horst Buchholz (an unlikely Mexican) all went on to successful acting careers. The format of this film was replicated in many later films.

The plot couldn't be simpler. Desperate Mexican villagers, bled white by local bandits, retain a group of almost equally desperate gunslingers from the other side of the Rio Grand to deal with the bandits. A lot of the fun arises early on as leader Cajun Chris seeks out half a dozen suitably deranged but deadly types for the job. Ostensibly they are doing it for the money but it becomes apparent early on that they are really on the team just for the hell of it. Once they are together things don't quite go to plan, but the camaraderie holds up, and their mission is accomplished, though at considerable cost.

Despite all the action it is a character-driven piece in some ways. Eli Wallach's Calvera the bandit leader is more than a cardboard cut-out villain and Yul Brynner's enigmatic Chris keeps us guessing. The villagers, despite their matching white smocks, are not all lily-white and each of the Seven has at least one interesting weakness.

A strong feature of the film is the music, penned by the ubiquitous Elmer Bernstein, and entirely appropriate, with a main theme which seems to be permanently welded into my brain.

'The Magnificent Seven' was made at a time when the appetite for westerns was going into decline. Whereas westerns were staple film and TV fare in the 50's, the sixties saw a sharp decline, as spy dramas and sex farces burgeoned. One interesting theory I've heard about this is that it's not so much that the audience tired of westerns, but that TV executives discovered that they were being watched by the people too poor to buy their sponsor's fine products. Anyway this film holds up very well after 45 years, a true classic and satisfying to watch.