A Man Must Do What A Man Must Do. (The Magnificent Seven (DVD))

Name: MALU

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Product:	The Magnificent Seven (DVD)
Date:	26/03/02 (146 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's all in the op.

Disadvantages: It's all in the op.

I know what a Western is, believe me, I’ve seen approximately five during my not so short lifetime. Heehee, of course I know that you expected to see a bigger number, but there you are.

As if this weren’t enough to disqualify me, I’ve never written a film review so far - do I see your fingertip moving down to click yourself away from this site? Wait, I really don’t intend to take the Mackey out of this category, dooyoo is about opinions, isn’t it? An opinion I have, and I’d burst if I couldn’t share it with you.

Isn’t it fascinating how our brains work? I’m not a fan of Westerns as you know now, not even a film freak, yet I’ve stored away images, info and trivia collected randomly and to no purpose; when I saw that The Magnificent Seven would be shown on German TV I remembered that that was one of THE cult films of the 20th century and thought it was now or never (having waited for 42 years already!).

As my German TV mag didn’t give the names of all actors, I had to take a look at the net for this op. When I saw the number of entries, I nearly fell off my swivel-chair: 385 000! (King Lear by comparison reaches meagre 199 000 (I had to look that up the day before)).

So what is the film about, what makes it outstanding, why is its fame ever increasing?

The shortest synopsis I’ve found is the following: ‘A group of seven tough gunslingers are hired by a Mexican village to put a stop to the vicious bandit and his gang who have been pillaging it for years‘.

An Indian has been killed in an accident and the people of the village don’t allow the undertaker to bury him on the local graveyard. In steps Chris (Yul Brynner), who takes the reins of the hearse and sets off; Vin, an onlooker, (Steve McQueen) grabs a rifle and accompanies him.

Why do they do that? The people of the village are racists, but I don’t see Chr
is and Vin as making an antiracist statement, they don’t care who’s in the coffin. For Chris it’s the unjust deed which gets him going, evil as such must be fought (who was it who declared war on the Empire Of Evil many years later, wasn‘t it someone who knew a lot about Westerns?!). Vin might have similar feelings, but he’s also hooked by the danger implied.

Although the Mexican villagers who hire Chris can only offer him the ridiculous sum of 20 dollars, he accepts. Why? Same reason as above, methinks .

Nearly an hour of the film passes (runtime: 126 minutes) until he’s recruited the other six fighters. Apart from Yul Brynner, who was already an established star, the cast featured half a 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, this ‘once-in-a-lifetime cast’ is one of the reasons for the film’s long-lasting success (director: John Sturges). Each of the actors has his scene, if you‘re a fan of one or the other, you must be overjoyed.

In case you’re waiting for the name of a famous American actress now, you’ve waited in vain, it’s a men’s film, the only women are the Mexicans’ wives and daughters who we get to know only in the second half.

In Germany all films without exception are dubbed, a deplorable fact. I suffer, sometimes more, sometimes less. In the case of The Magnificent Seven, less. When Chris is asked where he’s come from, he points his thumb backward over his shoulder, when asked where he wants to go, he points his index finger forward. None of the men suffers from logorrhea; Britt (James Coburn) has about ten sentences. I simply love that guy! I have to think of the sharp-tongued American author Dorothy Parker who once said of an actress, “She runs the gamu
t of emotions from A to B.” Britt/Coburn never leaves A!

They are all chopped off the same block, tough loners, hireable killers, (killing off only the baddies, of course), have no enemies (at least none alive), but no friends, either, no family, no roots, no homes. Are they happy or unhappy? They accept their fate, happiness is not a subject. They do what a man must do. We all know that sentence, but what is it that tells a man what to do, which authority? Certainly not a worldly one; you can dig deep if you like and come up with Kant’s duty-oriented morality or the Ten Commandments (the leader‘s name is CHRIS!), if you do so, the film indeed transcends the simple Western.

So that is what American goodies look like! Aha! Interestingly they’re all Anglos, no AfricanAmerican among them. The only concession to the fact that the Americans are descendants of immigrants from all over the world is the character Charles Bronson plays, he’s of mixed Irish-Mexican descent. Hollywood/America wasn’t politically correct yet in 1960 when the film was made.

For me the most interesting thing about the film is that it has become more and more famous over the years. Let me write it down again: it was made in 1960. It’s one of the last feel-good films about American adventurism abroad.

The way the Mexicans are shown strikes me as condescending and patronizing, they’re friendly and a little daft, not capable of a logistic operation on a grand scale even if their own independence is at stake. And they’re so grateful when help comes from the white Americans!

Things were different when America got involved in Vietnam and have never been so clear-cut and in a way innocent as in this film. Seen on the background of the history of the USA during the second half of the 20th century the film grows from a simple, albeit well-made, Western into a zeitgeisty document of a paradise lost.


No wonder that the Americans can’t get enough of that film.

In case you are against analysing everything, you can forget all I’ve said, sit back on your sofa, put your cowboy boots on the table in front of you and just watch the film as a thrilling Western, enjoy good acting, a laconic script and the famous film music. I certainly enjoyed the German Horst Buchholz playing the Kid, he’s one of the actors young women of my generation used to have a crush on.

Summary: