Truly Magnificent

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve watched The Magnificent Seven (1960), but considering how little I actually remembered, it must be the first time in a long time.

It opens with an army of banditos lead by Eli Wallach raid a Mexican village and tell them that he will be back for the rest of the harvest. In desperation, they gather everything they have of value and head to the city to buy guns to defend themselves.

In the city, they come across a funeral director refusing to bury a man because he isn’t white. So Yul Brynner steps up and agrees to drive the hearse to Boot Hill. Steve McQueen offers to ride shotgun. They handily dispatch the mob trying to keep them out, and the town rallies to bury the man. Bystander Horst Buchholz is so impressed he starts following these guys. I had forgotten that Brynner and McQueen were introduced on a note of racial tolerance.

The Mexicans approach Brynner to ask him where they can buy guns, and he says that they can get men with guns just as cheap. So he gathers five other men, including McQueen, Brad Dexter, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Robert Vaughan. Buchholz tries to join but Brynner dismisses him as a kid.

So the magnificent six ride off, with Buchholz following. Now, I guess I don’t remember Magnificent Seven all that well, but I remember its inspiration, Seven Samurai, well enough to watch it in Japanese and recite chunks of the English translation (I don’t understand Japanese that well, either). I was surprised at how closely Buchholz’s fishing scene matches Mifune’s version. They have a very different style - Mifune-San plays like a monkey, squatting on his haunches and leaping around, where Buchholz is more puppy-like. But in both versions, his fish fry gets him included in the seven.

It just occurred to me that maybe Brynner got the job as leader because of his bald head, like Shimura-san in Seven Samurai.

This version really doesn’t live up to Kurosawa-san’s original, especially the final battle. But director John Sturges does give it a beautiful sweeping grandeur, and the cast is excellent. Brynner, in particular, is iconic. And the Marlboro theme, by Elmer Bernstein, is pretty catchy.

We will not even mention the 2016 remake.