Best Western Ever.
No debate...you'll never change my mind.
shareTotally agree
share
MovieChat Forums > The Magnificent Seven (1960) Discussion > Best Western Ever.
Has to be in the conversation with Tombstone and The Wild Bunch.
shareWont change your mind since you dont want to debate, but Once upon a time in the west kicks this movies a$$!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pffft, my suspension of disbelief has higher standards than that.
I have this plus
Navajo joe and the dollars trilogy and once upon a time in the west and the wild bunch and 80s movie Silverado
Tombstone. I have that too quick and thedead
shareOne of the best. Probably not the best. But I'm not trying to change your mind.
shareThis one started the shift from the "American-based" Ford/Hawks/Mann Westerns to the "international Western" that would peak with Leone.
Though its origins were in "The Seven Samarai," the film also hooked into the "team on a mission" movie that would ALSO peak in the sixties: The Guns of Navarone, The Professionals, The Dirty Dozen. At the very end of the sixties, The Wild Bunch would rather blow apart this template, but there was still a team (five...outlaws) and there was still a bonding between Americans and Mexicans(the ones on the "right side of the revolution.")
CONT
CONT
Yul Brynner was the established star when this came out in 1960....but one(McQueen)...two(Bronson) and three(Coburn) major stars of the sixties and seventies got their real starts here(yes, they'd worked in movies before, but these roles put them on the map.) Vaughn would get TV stardom(The Man From UNCLE) and two more major movies with McQueen(Bullitt and The Towering Inferno.)
James Coburn on a DVD documentary made fun of Horst Bucholz, who was evidently SUPPOSED to be the breakout star of The Mag 7 , but it didn't happen -- both the callow actor and his character were obnoxious. He was also here a German actor playing a Mexican.
Which leaves good ol' Brad Dexter, whose claim to fame was being the one of the 7 whom people could least remember -- but he's got one of the best characters in the movie, and he's perfect casting. Its funny how he always thinks the poor peasant pay is a cover for a fortune in gold, and how Brynner allows him to believe that as he is dying ("Good...I didn't want to die a sucker.") Dexter is kind of the Professor Henry Hill of the range, big and robust and barrel chested. Equally good with the others, just didn't become a star.
These are among the reasons that The Magnificent Seven is a great seminal Western , but there are two more: the great score(especially the overture, but all through the movie as well) and the great dialogue, full of funny, wry and sometimes philosophical lines for everyone to say: the Seven, the villagers, the villainous Calvera...