The Magnificent Seven

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The Magnificent Seven

Original film poster
Directed by John Sturges
Produced by John Sturges
Written by William Roberts
Walter Newman (uncredited)
Walter Bernstein (uncredited)
Starring Yul Brynner
Eli Wallach
Steve McQueen
Charles Bronson
Robert Vaughn
James Coburn
Horst Buchholz
Brad Dexter
Music by Elmer Bernstein
Cinematography Charles Lang
Editing by Ferris Webster
Distributed by United Artists
Release date(s) Flag of the United States October 23, 1960
Running time 128 min.
Country United States
Language English
Budget $3,000,000
Followed by Return of the Seven (1966)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

The Magnificent Seven is a 1960 western film directed by John Sturges about a group of hired gunmen protecting a Mexican village from bandits. It is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film, Seven Samurai.

Contents

[edit] Plot

A Mexican village is periodically raided by bandits led by Calvera (Eli Wallach). As he and his men ride away from their latest visit, Calvera promises to return.

Desperate, the village leaders travel to a border town to buy guns to defend themselves. They approach a veteran gunslinger, Chris (Yul Brynner). He tells them guns alone will not do them any good; they are farmers, not fighters. They ask him to lead them, but Chris rejects them, telling them a single man is not enough. They keep at him though, and he eventually gives in. He recruits men, though the pay is a pittance.

The Magnificent Seven (L to R): Brynner, McQueen, Buchholz, Bronson, Vaughn, Dexter, Coburn
The Magnificent Seven (L to R): Brynner, McQueen, Buchholz, Bronson, Vaughn, Dexter, Coburn

First to answer the call is the hotheaded, inexperienced Chico (Horst Buchholz), but he is rejected. Harry Luck (Brad Dexter), an old friend of Chris, joins because he believes Chris is looking for treasure. Vin (Steve McQueen) signs on after going broke from gambling. Other recruits include Bernardo O'Reilly (Charles Bronson), Britt (James Coburn), fast and deadly with his switchblade, and Lee (Robert Vaughn), who is on the run and needs someplace to lie low until things cool down. Chico trails the group as they ride south, and is eventually allowed to join them.

Even with seven, the group knows they will be vastly outnumbered by the bandits. However, their expectation is that once the bandits know they will have to fight, they will decide to move on to some other unprotected village, rather than bother with an all-out battle. Upon reaching the village, the group begins training the residents. As they work together, the gunmen and villagers begin to bond. Chico finds a woman he is attracted to, Petra (Rosenda Monteros), and Bernardo befriends the children of the village.

Calvera comes back and is disappointed to find the villagers have hired gunmen. After a brief exchange, the bandits are chased away. Later, Chico spies on the outlaws and returns with the news that Calvera and his men will not simply be moving on, as had been expected. They are planning to return in full force, as the outlaws are broke and starving, and need the crops from the village to survive.

The seven debate whether they should leave. Not having expected a full-scale war, some of the seven as well as some of the villagers are in favor of the group's departure. However, Chris adamantly insists that they will stay. They decide to make a surprise raid on the bandit camp but find it empty. Returning, they are ambushed by Calvera's men, who have been let into the village by those villagers fearful of the impending fight. The seven's lives are spared, as Calvera is certain that by now, the Americans have lost any further desire to fight for this village, and he fears revenge if they are killed; they are disarmed and escorted out of the village.

Despite the odds against them, and despite their betrayal by the villagers, all of Chris' group except Harry decide to return and finish the job the next morning. During the ensuing battle, Harry returns to rescue Chris, and is mortally wounded. Bernardo is killed protecting children he had befriended; Lee and Britt are also slain. Seeing the gunmen's bravery, the villagers are inspired to overcome their own fear, and they grab whatever they can as weapons and join the battle. The bandits are routed. Calvera is shot by Chris; puzzled, he asks why a man like Chris came back, but dies without an answer.

As the three survivors leave, Chico decides to stay with Petra. Chris and Vin ride away, pausing briefly at the graves of their fallen comrades. Chris observes, "Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose."

[edit] Cast

[edit] Differences from Seven Samurai

Although The Magnificent Seven is modeled so closely on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai that they share even some dialogue (in different languages), there are several notable differences:

  • Samurai's villagers are sent to town to hire swordsmen. In this remake, the villagers are sent to town to buy guns. Chris tells them that guns won't be enough, that they'll need gunmen. As in the original, the hired men teach the villagers to defend themselves, and the villagers take a role in the fighting.
  • A scene is omitted in which the villagers capture a bandit and begin beating him in the street. They are ordered to stop by the head Samurai, but when an old woman whose son was killed by the bandits approaches, the villagers pressure the head samurai to allow her to avenge her son's death, at which point the head samurai turns and walks away as the old woman kills the bandit with bladed farming tools.
  • Most of the seven samurai had never met before their job; Kambei only knew Shichiroji. However, Chris Adams seems to know most of the gunmen except for Vin, Chico, and Bernardo (who was recommended by Harry).
  • Chris Adams's introduction is different from Kambei's. In the original, Kambei makes his first impression on the farmers by pretending to be a monk in order to rescue a child taken captive by a bandit. In this film, Chris and Vin come to the farmers' attention by taking a dead Native American to be buried at a local cemetery, over the objections of some local townspeople.
  • Katsushiro, the aspiring young samurai, and Kikuchiyo, the would-be samurai whose hatred for the farmers hides a painful past, are combined into the single character, Chico. Unlike Kikuchiyo, Chico is not killed at the climax of the film. Chico is given Kikuchiyo's pivotal moment halfway through the film, in which he chastises the farmers for reacting to the samurai with fear, yet still expecting to receive their protection.
  • The combination of Katsushiro and Kikuchiyo opens a slot for the Robert Vaughn/Lee character - a gunfighter who has lost his nerve. This warrior would not be acceptable in the Japanese curtural context of the original, as Lee would be viewed simply as a coward.
  • In the original, the samurai make a pre-emptive strike against the bandits' campsite, losing one of their own in the process. Thus, when the bandits attack the village, the samurai are short one man, and three more are killed in the battles. In this version, that attack takes place after Calvera's band are initially driven off, and they find that the camp is abandoned. In both films, three of the seven survive.
  • The bandit leader Calvera plays a much larger role than any of the unnamed bandits in the original.
  • Chico and Katsushiro both fall in love with a farmer's daughter. In Seven Samurai, the farmer's daughter recognizes the impossibility of bridging the class divide and ignores the samurai once the fighting is over. In The Magnificent Seven, Chico stays behind to be with the peasant girl. No explanation is offered for the gunfighter's future role in an agrarian village community.
  • In The Seven Samurai, the village elder is killed by the bandits when he refuses to abandon his house, which is an outlying house that the Samurai determined could not be protected. In The Magnificent Seven, the village elder likewise refuses to abandon his house but suffers no repercussions for it.

[edit] Production

Filming began on 1 March 1960, on location in Mexico, where both the village and the US border town were built for the film. The first scene shot was the first part of the six gunfighters' journey to the Mexican village, prior to Chico being brought into the group.

[edit] Cinematographic process

Further information: CinemaScope

The cinematographic process was anamorphic. This process was developed in the 1940s but not widely used until the 1960s. A film with anamorphic aspect ratio appears wider (more panoramic) than when shot and projected at a ratio of 4:3 (width:height), which had been the industry standard until wide-screen formats gained popularity. This change was intended to give the cinema a look that would further distinguish it from - and give a competing edge over - television (which used the 4:3 format).

[edit] Sequels, television series

The film's success inspired three sequels:

None of these were as successful as the original film. The film also inspired a television series, The Magnificent Seven, which ran from 1998 to 2000.

[edit] Score

The film's score along with the main theme is by Elmer Bernstein. The score was nominated for an Academy Award in 1961. The original soundtrack was not released at the time until reused and rerecorded by Bernstein for the soundtrack of Return of the Seven. Instead electric guitar cover versions by Al Caiola in the US and John Barry in the UK were successful on the popular charts. A vocal theme not written by Bernstein was used in a trailer (film).

From 1963 the theme was used in commercials in the USA for Marlboro cigarettes with Victoria Bitter beer in Australia having a similar sounding but different tune. The theme was included in the James Bond film Moonraker (also from United Artists). Other uses include a passage on an album by the rock band Yes in the early 1970s; in the 2005 film The Ringer; as entrance music for the British band James, as well as episodes of The Simpsons that had a "western" theme (mainly in the episode entitled "Dude, Where's My Ranch?").

[edit] Pop-culture references

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • A well-known tribute to the movie is Auf Wiedersehen Pet (1983-2005), primarily in its second series, where all the characters decide which of the seven their personalities would fit. They have been commonly known in the media as "The Magnificent Seven".
  • Robert Vaughn (Lee) later played the recurring character Judge Oren Travis in the television series The Magnificent Seven (1998).
  • Vaughn also played the character Gelt in Roger Corman's 1980 film Battle Beyond the Stars, The Magnificent Seven given a science fiction makeover. The character is an update of Lee from the earlier film, to the extent that much of Gelt's dialogue is carried near-verbatim, from The Magnificent Seven.
  • Stephen King's Dark Tower series is acknowledged by the author to have been influenced by Sturges' film, as well as its antecedent Seven Samurai. In particular, the fifth book in the series, Wolves of the Calla, borrows heavily from the themes and plotlines from the films. In this book the town defended by the series' "gunslingers" is named "Calla Bryn Sturgis" in homage to both John Sturges and Yul Brynner.
  • The final episode of the first season of the British comedy Blackadder, The Seventh Seal, features the main character (played by Rowan Atkinson) assembling seven evil-doers to overthrow the king. Blackadder and other characters parody this film by signalling the number of men who have been recruited with their fingers, as Chris and Vin do throughout the first half of this film.
  • In Westworld, written and directed by Michael Crichton, Yul Brynner played an android impersonating his black-dressed gunfighter as "Chris Adams".
  • There have been adaptations of the film's plot, notably in a German Karl May movie called Thunder at the Border (Winnetou und sein Freund Old Firehand) (1966), and in the science fiction movie Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), in which Robert Vaughn reprised his role from The Magnificent Seven.
  • It also inspired the Bollywood (India) film 'Sholay', the second longest-running film in Indian cinema.
  • In the European version of the Playstation 2 Videogame "Ape Escape 3", the monkeys are filming a movie called "The Magnificent Monkeys".
  • The 1980s television series The A-Team was conceived as a cross between The Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen. James Coburn was reportedly considered for the role of The A-Team's leader, Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith. The role went to George Peppard - who was initially chosen to play Vin in The Magnificent Seven.
  • In an episode of Cheers, the cast votes to watch a broadcast of the movie. When Frasier Crane elects to join them, he says, "I love a good Horst Buchholz film."
  • Episodes 131 to 133 of the anime series Hokuto no Ken 2 (Fist of the North Star in English) features a group of cowboys modeled after the titular characters from the film known as the Kouya no shichi-nin ("The Wasteland Seven"), which is the Japanese title of the film.
  • The Egyptian movie Shams El Zanaty starring Adel Emam is based on the plot of The Magnificent Seven, with an Egyptian village instead of Mexican.
  • The Disney-Pixar animated movie A Bug's Life is loosely based on this plot.

[edit] External links

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