The Magnificent Seven (1960)

The Magnificent Seven is an American western first released in 1960, directed by John Sturges.  The film stars Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and Robert Vaughn.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


When a Mexican village is raided by a party of bandits led by the ruthless Calvera, its inhabitants have no choice but to hand over their hard-earned harvest.  Fearing that the bandits will drive them to starvation, the village leaders take the advice of an old man and decide to buy guns to ward of any further bandit raids.  Arriving in a border town, they meet a hardened gunfighter, Chris, who tells them it would be cheaper to hire men than buy guns.  Although the villagers have little to offer Chris, the gunfighter finally agrees to work for them and sets about recruiting a team of sharpshooters to help him frighten off the bandits. Having found five other experienced gunmen willing to fight alongside him, Chris leads these to the Mexican village, trailed by Chico, a young hothead who is determined to prove himself.  The next time Calvera attacks the village, he is repulsed by the hired gunslingers.  A short while later, Chico overhears Calvera planning to attack the village in force...

Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) was such a hit when it arrived in America in the mid-1950s that an American remake was a virtually certainty, particularly as the Japanese film was itself inspired by earlier westerns.  The task of directing the remake fell to John Sturges, who had recently made a number of impressive contributions to the western genre - Escape from Fort Bravo (1953), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and Last Train from Gun Hill (1959).   The Magnificent Seven so impressed Kurosawa that he presented Sturges with a samurai sword by way of gratitude.  

As far as remakes go, The Magnificent Seven is an impressive beast and deserves its classic status, although it doesn’t quite match the narrative power and sheer visual brilliance of Kurosawa’s samurai masterpiece.  Of the westerns that John Sturges directed, this is arguably the one that has the greatest visual impact, and the influence of John Ford can be felt in many sequences, most notably the iconic long shots of the heroes riding across a stunning Wild West landscape like avenging angels.   In tone and substance, the film has a great deal in common with Sturges’ previous Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) - both films involve maverick outsiders resolved (seemingly without purpose) to defeat a local threat against ridiculous odds, and there is a distinct anti-racist slant to both films (something which was very rare in Hollywood at the time).  

In narrative terms, The Magnificent Seven is a crude morality tale that pushes the myth of the heroic gunslinger to the point of caricature.  Its central flaw is that, unlike the Seven Samurai, there is no clear motive for why the seven gunmen should come to the aid of the villagers.  Just what do they gain for putting their lives on the line other than job satisfaction and a few paltry dollars?  Yet the film makes a virtue of this apparent weakness and throws the question back into our faces.  Just why do the strong ever help the weak, why do we care about those less fortunate than ourselves?  When Calvera asks Chris why he chooses to help the poor villagers, the question is left unanswered - as it should be.

The worldwide success of The Magnificent Seven provided a significant career boost to many of the actors who starred in it.  At the time it was made, only Yul Brynner could be considered a star.  Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson and Robert Vaughn were all on the cusp of stardom and this film certainly did their careers no harm.  The film also provided the talented young German actor Horst Buchholz with his international breakthrough and helped to establish Eli Wallach as one of America’s leading character actors.  The only one of the leads not to go on to better things was Brad Dexter, who fell into virtual obscurity a few years after this film.  

As you would expect with such a strong cast line-up, the performances are several notches above what you would expect to find in your average western.  Particularly impressive are Brynner and Wallach, whose gunman and bandit chief go way beyond the stock archetypes and reveal far more complex personalities than the script would suggest.   Brynner’s terse, black-clad sharpshooter is one of the great icons of the classic western and the actor would have the opportunity to reprise the role in the sequel Return of the Seven (1966) and the sci-fi classic Westworld (1973).  McQueen and Coburn both have a solid presence, and whilst neither has much in the way of dialogue, their characters come across as well-defined and sympathetic.  Much of the narrative burden falls on the slim shoulders of Buchholz, who not only has to provide most of the light relief but must also carry off a romantic subplot - all of which he does admirably well.  Bronson gets some of the best lines and the most poignant scenes - he is at his best not when firing a gun but when he sits down to explain the notion of heroism to a group of easily excitable Mexican boys.  On a less positive note, Robert Vaughn looks painfully out of place and fails to make much of his part, whilst Brad Dexter does a very good impression of the invisible man for much of the film.

One of the most enduring and influential of the classic westerns, The Magnificent Seven inspired three sequels - Return of the Seven (1966), Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) and The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972) - although none of these is as well-regarded as the original.  The Steve Martin comedy Three Amigos (1986) spoofs the film outrageously.  It also led to a TV series The Magnificent Seven, which ran from 1998 to 2000.  Elmer Bernstein’s Oscar-nominated score provides one of the most memorable film themes of all time, an instant nostalgia trip for anyone who grew up with the film when it was first released or regularly repeated on television in the 1970s.  The Magnificent Seven may not be the greatest of the classic westerns, but it is assuredly one of the best-loved.

© Steve Chandler 2011

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