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The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Cast: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, James Coburn, Horst Buchholz
Director: John Sturges
Writer: William Roberts
Composer: Elmer Bernstein

While there is a lot you read into a millennial watching of John Sturges’ “The Magnificent Seven”, the one thing you cannot quarrel with is, that it is a rip-roaring yarn. This 1960 film is inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s “ The Seven Samurai” who in turn was inspired by the John Wayne Westerns. So what goes around definitely comes around.

As you watch “The Magnificent Seven”, you are also looking out for which scenes, found echoes in our very Seven Samurai, “Sholay”. The plot is very simple. A wicked bandit, Calvera, is making life impossible for the people in an impoverished village in Mexico, raiding the village and making off with their meagre grain.

The villagers finally decide to cross the border and hire gunslingers to do their job for them. Seven gunslingers led by Chris, come to the village, give the villagers hope, train them and rid the village of Calvera and his pillaging, looting hoards after some heart-stopping battles.

That is the bare bones of the story. But the muscles, veins, sinews and flesh is what makes this film stand out from so many others in the same genre. “The Magnificent Seven” stands like a colossus among every action movie to follow. By setting the template for the flawed anti-hero, the world-weary cynic with a heart of gold, assembling the team, each individual’s quirks, follies and back story, adrenalin-charged action, crackling dialogue and loads of testosterone, “The Magnificent Seven” showed the way for every action movie that followed.

With dialogues like “We deal in lead,” “If god didn’t want them sheared, he wouldn’t make them sheep,” and “the deserter hiding out in the middle of a battlefield,” you can do nothing but stand and cheer.

And I have not even begun to speak about the cast! This was a breakout film for many of the cast members. Apart from Yul Brynner as the leader of the seven, all the others were virtual unknowns before the movie propelled them to the stratosphere.

Leading the pack of young Turks was Steve McQueen as sharp shooter Vin who did everything he could to draw the camera to himself. There was Charles Bronson as Bernardo O’Reilly whose story was the most touching. James Coburn played the laconic Britt, whose knife is faster than a speeding bullet. Stage actor Eli Wallach played the psychotic Calvera while the strangest of all was the casting of the German Horst Buchholz as the hot-headed young Mexican Chico.

“Guns for Hire — the Making of Magnificent Seven”, is a fascinating documentary. Actor-director Chazz Palminteri says the film was important because it talks about the morality of being a gunslinger. James Coburn says how he watched “Seven Samurai” 12 times in 12 days and Brynner comments on how “Seven Samurai” is the greatest western of all time. Only it was made by the Japanese in the Japanese idiom.

There are also interviews with Brynner’s and McQueen’s wives. Doris, Brynner’s wife, talks of how they got married on sets and used the set props for the wedding celebration. McQueen’s wife tells the story of Brynner threatening McQueen to take off his hat if McQueen did not stop fidgeting on camera. And McQueen behaved himself after that!

The film was shot in Mexico and the Mexicans were so unhappy about the way they had been depicted in an earlier Gary Cooper film, “Vera Cruz,” that they insisted there be a censor on set to whet every line.

“Magnificent Seven” was released on October 23 1960, did poorly and was taken off the theatres. It went on to become a huge hit in Europe and then returned to the States to rapidly earn cult status. The film is the second most played western on telly and spawned three sequels and a television series. Not a bad performance for a film dismissed as a Western with a Mongolian from New York playing a cowboy leader and a German playing a Mexican.

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