OVP: The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Film: The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Stars: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, James Coburn, Eli Wallach

Director: John Sturges

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Yul Brynner: click here to learn more about Mr. Brynner (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Throughout this year, we're profiling a lot of western stars, obviously, and with that, a lot of westerns.  These are all westerns that I've never seen before, and for the most part, are westerns I'm pretty comfortable saying that I've never seen before.  The films of Anthony Mann & Budd Boetticher are classics, but if we're being honest, they're not classics in the same way that The Searchers or The Wild Bunch are...they aren't universally-seen films by most film fans.  Today, though, we're getting to one of the few classic films of the western genre that I'm kind of looking sideways on, admitting that I have somehow never seen before.  Yul Brynner in 1960 was cast in a movie that, quite frankly, didn't do super well at the domestic box office (it was a smash hit overseas, particularly in the Soviet Union), but in the years that followed has become synonymous with the genre and is arguably the most important (culturally) western that we'll profile all year, and one pretty much everyone who is invested in the genre has seen before.  It is also one of the only westerns to spawn a genuine franchise, with three sequels, a remake, and a TV series all coming out of it, along with an Elmer Bernstein score that counts as one of the most iconic in film history.  Today, we are going to talk about The Magnificent Seven.

(Spoilers Ahead) Based on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, the movie is about a poor Mexican village that is run by Calvera (Wallach), a ruthless leader of a group of bandits who frequently rob the villagers, who are defenseless, of their food to feed his men, leaving them largely to live by on scraps.  They decide one day to fight back, and look to initially buy guns to defend themselves.  When Chris Adams (Brynner) tells them that men are cheaper than guns (great line), Chris helps them recruit a band of men, seven in total, to defend the city.  Throughout, we learn about these men, who come from different backgrounds (a hotheaded young shootist, a fortune seeker, a knife expert, a drifter...it's a motley crew), but come to find some honor in defending the people of the city.  This honor is what Calvera, who keeps assuming they'll give up, can't see beyond, and it is his downfall.  In a shootout that kills four the seven, Calvera dies, and the townspeople are saved, with Chris and one of the other men, the drifter (played by McQueen) going off into the sunset, with Chris ending with the enigmatic line "only the farmers won...we lost...we'll always lose."

The film itself, I'll be honest, is a pretty standard western on its surface.  The cast was in various stages of their careers, with Brynner at the peak of his stardom, while McQueen, Coburn, & Bronson were all years away from the peak of theirs, and it shows in the casting.  Given where they were in their careers I get why some of these supporting parts weren't given stronger credence in the story (Brynner was the headliner in 1960), but Bronson & Coburn are such good actors I kept wanting more from them.  So the cast itself feeds into the standard western line-a basic story, admittedly one stolen from one of the greatest films ever made, with a misused cast should be cause for complaint.

But it's impossible to care too much because even if it's misused, the film itself still comes off successfully.  The scenes we do get of Coburn, Bronson, and especially Wallach are well-done, and the dialogue is solid, and a bit above-the-board for a western in 1960.  It's also aided by a grand slam score from Elmer Bernstein.  This lost to the theme from Exodus, which is a fine piece of music, don't get me wrong, but given that Bernstein was writing one of the defining pieces of music (it is regularly used in everything from Oscar clips to commercials to other movies) at the time, and that the theme from Psycho, another anthem of Hollywood, wasn't even nominated...the Academy missed the train a little bit on this one.