The Magnificent Seven [Special Edition]

Director: The Mirisch Company

Overview

"John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven has finally gotten the treatment that it deserves, 41 years after its original release, complete with an accompanying narration, a feature-length documentary about its making, and a bunch of trailers. The movie, now considered one of a handful of classic Westerns -- alongside John Ford's Stagecoach and My Darling Clementine, Fred Zinnemann's High Noon, and Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo -- was dumped on the U.S. market in 1960, closed quickly, became a massive hit overseas, and was re-released here to massive success. United Artists, still oblivious to what they had, sold it to television very quickly, then degraded the original with a series of ever-poorer sequels. It was issued at least three times on laserdisc, the first two in totally unacceptable full-screen and letterboxed editions, then one last time in an improved version from a partly restored source, with an unmixed music track (not on the DVD) and with the first sequel, Return of the Magnificent Seven, appended. This DVD makes that last laserdisc almost irrelevant, except for the presence of the unmixed music on the latter -- but even that has been made somewhat obsolete with the release of the actual soundtrack from the film (there was no soundtrack LP released in 1960). The picture is sharp and the colors rich and solid (though one suspects a full-blown restoration might look even better in that regard), and the contrasts are about all that one could hope for. The audio is a little muted, but pumps up alright and very cleanly; overall this is the best way to see the movie in 40 years. The bonus materials are as big a treat as the presentation of the movie. Eli Wallach, Walter Mirisch, James Coburn, and Robert Relyea (the assistant to director/producer Sturges) are dazzling in their recollections, and glowing in their recollections of Sturges' work, but also in their appreciation of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, the source for this movie. It's also interesting to hear the contrast between the recollections of how the project originated here, versus the material on the documentary film that also appears on the disc -- associate producer Louis Morheim rightfully claims credit on the latter for generating the idea, though Yul Brynner also claimed for years that he had conceived of the notion. The discussion is warm, funny, and lively, and the only thing that might have made it better would be if Sturges had lived to record this track; when Sturges recorded his audio track for Criterion's laserdisc edition of The Great Escape in 1992, he expressed the fervent wish that he be asked to do one for The Magnificent Seven. And one wishes that the producers could have gotten Brad Dexter to contribute, and that there were fewer long blank stretches, though the unnarrated portions are interesting and exciting to watch. The documentary makes for good viewing on its own, and would have been worth a ten dollar bonus charge. One key element of the production that has seldom been discussed anywhere are the problems that the film ran into with the Mexican government. It was considered essential, both for verisimilitude and to avoid an impending writers' strike, that The Magnificent Seven be shot in Mexico, but Robert Aldrich's film Vera Cruz, which had been shot there (and was also a UA film), had outraged the government with what it felt was the offensive portrayal of the Mexican population. It took some serious diplomacy on the part of Sturges and the other makers of the movie -- and the presence of a censor from the government on the set to approve virtually every shot and line of dialogue -- to get The Magnificent Seven approved. The menu opens automatically on start-up, the ""Special Features"" section is easy to access and manipulate, the chapter markers are generous and well chosen, and the disc is accompanied by a souvenir booklet about the production."

Product Details

Release Date:	05/08/2001
UPC:	0027616861078
Original Release:	1960
Rating:	NR
Source:	Mgm (Video & Dvd)
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[monaural, Dolby Digital]
Language:	English
Time:	2:08:00
Sales rank:	1,265

Special Features

Documentary; Audio commentary by Eli Wallach, James Coburn, and Walter Mirisch; Photo Gallery; Collectible booklet; Original theatrical trailers

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Yul Brynner	Chris
Steve McQueen	Vin
Horst Buchholz	L'enfant
Eli Wallach	Calvera
Charles Bronson	O'Reilly
Robert Vaughn	Lee
Brad Dexter	Harry Luck
James Coburn	Britt
Vladimir Sokoloff	Old Man
Rosenda Monteros	Petra
Jorge Martinez de Hoyos	Hilario
Whit Bissell	Chamlee
Val Avery	Henry
Bing Russell	Robert
Rico Alaniz	Sotero
Bob Wilke	Wallace,Wallace
Enrique Lucero	Actor
Danny Bravo	Boy with O'Reilly
José Chávez	Rafael
Pepe Hern	Tomas
John Alonzo	Miguel
Alex Montoya	Actor
Natividad Vacío	Villager
Mario Navarro	Boy with O'Reilly
Henry Amargo	Villager
Roberto Contreras	Villager
Valentin de Vargas	Santos - Calvera Henchman
Larry Duran	Calvera Henchman
Victor French	Front Office Clerk
Manuel Alvarado	Bartender
Joseph Ruskin	Flynn
Peter Sarsgaard	Actor
Denzel Washington	Actor
Ethan Hawke	Actor
Chris Pratt	Actor
Haley Bennett	Actor
Byung-hun Lee	Actor
Martin Sensmeier	Actor
Manuel Garcia-Rulfo	Actor
Jorge Marchegiant	Hilario
Elmer Bernstein	Composer

Technical Credits

Walter Bernstein

Walter Newman

William Roberts

Akira Kurosawa

Shinobu Hashimoto

Hideo Oguni

John Sturges	Director,Producer
Walter Bernstein	Screenwriter
Walter Newman	Screenwriter
William Roberts	Screenwriter
Milt Rice	Special Effects
Akira Kurosawa	Screenwriter
Shinobu Hashimoto	Screenwriter
Hideo Oguni	Screenwriter
Walter Mirisch	Executive Producer,Producer
Del Harris	Sound Effects
Rafael Ruiz Esparza	Sound Effects
Jack Solomon	Sound Effects
Jack Williams	Stunts
Lou Morheim	Producer

Editorial Reviews

One of the most popular Westerns of all time, John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven was based on Akira Kurosawa's 1954 epic The Seven Samurai (which was originally titled "The Magnificent Seven" and was itself a thematic descendant of the Westerns of John Ford). Director/producer Sturges packed a huge amount of plot and detail into what could have been a routine Western -- the opening threat to the Mexican village; the first meeting between Yul Brynner's Chris and Steve McQueen's Vin in a tense confrontation with a group of racist thugs trying to block a funeral procession; the decision to help the villagers and the gathering of the unlikely band of heroes; the heroes' journey to the village and their confrontation with who and what they, as gunmen, really represent to the people they're trying to help. Some of this kind of material had figured in other, earlier movies, including George Stevens' Shane, Anthony Mann's underrated The Tin Star, and Sturges' own Last Train From Gun Hill, but no one had ever put quite that much plot or character development into a single Western before. Apart from Yul Brynner, who was already an established star thanks to The King and I, the cast featured a half-dozen actors who were either on the edge of stardom, such as Eli Wallach and Steve McQueen, or who would become major stars in coming years, including James Coburn, Charles Bronson, and Robert Vaughn; indeed, Sturges would re-team with McQueen, Coburn, and Bronson for 1963's The Great Escape, a film that provided a huge boost to each man's career. The Magnificent Seven was a massive hit when it was first released and by 1966 had spawned the first of three sequels; but the cast, which grew in prominence as most of them became massive box-office attractions in their own right, only made the movie seem bigger and more important as time went on, so much so that, had it not gone to television in the early '60s, The Magnificent Seven would have been ripe for an even bigger theatrical run in, say, 1965 or 1966. As it was, a television series based on the film was finally spawned at the end of the 1990s. There were also enough parodies, as well as references to the movie in media touchstones like the 1980s sitcom Cheers -- The Magnificent Seven being the favorite movie of the bar's regular patrons -- to confirm its place in the cultural lexicon. None of the sequels or the television series, however, ever matched Sturges' original, either at the box office or in their impact on popular culture. The secret behind the original's vast success, apart from the once-in-a-lifetime cast and the dazzlingly memorable score by Elmer Bernstein, was its timing and underlying zeitgeist. The Magnificent Seven was one of the very last feel-good films about American adventurism abroad to come out of Hollywood. Appearing in the period immediately before Vietnam became a political worry and then a full-blown war, it was the last major movie to depict Americans (albeit gunmen and mercenaries) going to another country to help a people struggling for independence, without any of the complications that Vietnam added to that notion. The film was, thus, a two-tiered nostalgia experience -- initially, about the closing of the West and, in the next few years, in a much more powerful and potent way, as a fond look back at Americans' image of themselves as "good guys" in the modern world. The only flaw in the film that is apparent when looking at it today is the absence of a black member of the seven -- Sturges himself was an old-fashioned, two-fisted liberal, but it's debatable whether, even if the script had contained such a character, United Artists or any other studio, would have okayed that casting in 1959. Even three years later United tried to get Ralph Nelson to make Lillies of the Field with Steve McQueen in place of Sidney Poitier); not to mention the question of who would have played the part -- among the most visible black leading men of the period, Poitier was too young and James Edwards was the wrong type. In any case, the film is a perfect document of its time as it stands and has become identified as such an intensely American cultural document that many viewers are unaware of its origins as a samurai story.