The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven (1960) starts with a Mexican village being robbed after every harvest. The villagers cross the border to buy guns and hire seven gunmen instead. All of them work for very little, because none of them has anything else to do. It is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Kurosawa is said to have sent John Sturges a sword. His comment on the film was more measured: he found the American copy a disappointment, entertaining but not a version of Seven Samurai. There was serious friction on set between Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen. Unhappy with how little he had to say, McQueen shaded his eyes with his hat, flipped coins and rattled shotgun shells while Brynner spoke. Brynner built up mounds of dirt to match McQueen's height and McQueen kicked them apart. When the feud reached the newspapers, Brynner issued a statement saying he never feuded with actors, he feuded with studios. The script had to accommodate changes required by Mexican censors, which is partly why William Roberts joined the writing. Walter Newman asked for his own name to be removed when Roberts sought co-credit. The box office came out strangely. In the United States and Canada it took only 2.25 million dollars in rentals, a failure. In Europe it made 7.5 million. In the Soviet Union it sold 67 million tickets and became the highest grossing Hollywood film ever shown there. Elmer Bernstein's score was nominated for an Academy Award. It runs 128 minutes. Good for: the classical western, ensemble storytelling, and film music. Less good for: the Mexican villagers are largely written as a passive group waiting to be saved. Most of the seven are hard to tell apart. Compressing the three and a half hour structure of Seven Samurai costs the characters their depth.