People often
asked what are my favourite movies and my normal answer is that I watch so many
that I could not really say. But I going to let you into a secret, I do have
three films that I saw at the cinema on their initial release and since have
seen them many more times than I care to remember!
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| Chris Adams |
I knew when I came out of the film theatre in Enfield some thirty-five
years ago that I had just witnessed something really special. Since then I have
watched the 1979 original and the 2000 Redux many times at
home. In 2011 I had the privilege to watch Francis Ford Coppola’s restored and
remastered Apocalypse Now (1979) on the
big screen again at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre and after all these
years it had finally been confirmed: this is my all time favourite movie the
one I hate to love! It’s an
American
epic war film set during the Vietnam conflict, directed and produced by Francis
Ford Coppola and starring Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, and Robert Duvall. It deals with
the psychology of war and follows
a special operations officer sent to kill a U.S. Army Colonel who had gone ‘native’.
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| Vin Tanner. |
Then
of course there's
Quentin Tarantino's ‘cool universe’, a place that is hard and
fast, funny, stylish and filled deliberately with some clever references to
other cinematic works. Pulp Fiction (1994) is a film that defined American cinema in the 90’s. A piece
of cinematic work that is central to its age, influencing many films that
followed. A film that veers back and forth between humour and violence, a film
where your never sure if you should be laughing or cringing.
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| Britt |
But
the film I’ve seen the most over the years is a western, which as a wee boy was
my favourite genre. I first saw The Magnificent Seven in 1960 when
it was released and have lost track of how many times I've seen it since. Revisiting A Fistful
of Dollars
(1964) recently gave me an inclination to see the John Sturges movie one more
time. For some strange reason it has never lost its appeal from seeing it at
the Angel Islington cinema as a schoolboy some 54 years ago. For me it has a
familiar, comfortable feel but is still totally engaging and manages to bring
an emotional lump to my throat from the first time we meet Chris Adams (Yul
Brynner) and Vin Tanner (Steve McQueen) taking a dead Indian in the hearse up
to the towns Boot Hill to be laid to rest. There they meet armed opposition
which is quickly dispensed with by these two gun fighters, then up comes the
now familiar Elmer Bernstein score, the hearse is driven at speed back to the
undertakers office much to the enthusiasm of the towns inhabitants and passing
travellers. This brilliant scene sets the tone for the rest of the film.
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| Harry Luck. |
I'm sure your familiar
with the story that was specifically adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s 1954
masterpiece (and I don’t use that term lightly) Seven Samurai with Sturges adapting it to fit into the western
genre with the Ronin, master less Samurai, replaced with gunfighters.
We are south
of the border in Mexico, in a small village where its farmers are being
harassed by the bandit Calvera (Eli Wallace) and his men who invade the village
and steal some of the crops that’s have been stored following their harvest,
threatening to return and take the rest. Some of the more adventurous villagers
want to buy some guns and fight the bandits next time they pay them a visit. To
this purpose they travel across the border into America and set about buying
the weaponry they require. Witnessing the successful conclusion to the burial
of the Indian they approach Chris and ask him to buy the guns for them.
Although dressed in black and an obvious gun fighter he seems an honest man and
when he offers them the advice that it would be cheaper to buy men with guns,
rather than just guns they readily except his help in hiring the gun fighters
they require to carry out the task that the farmers are not really competent to
carry out themselves. Thus begins the recruitment of men to join Chris in this
crusade back across the Mexican border.
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| Bernardo O'Reilly. |
Obviously the
handsome drifter Vin, who has since riding shotgun on the hearse lost what
money he had on the gaming table in a Saloon Bar, joins Chris in his
recruitment drive. The next to join is Britt (James Coburn) a man with little
to say who is as good with a knife as he is with a gun, a man whose not
interested in money (the farmers are only offering $20 for a six week
contract!) only the challenge. Next up is Harry Luck (Brad Dexter) a very old
friend of Chris who believes there’s more to it than it than just $20! Next they find Bernardo O’Reilly (Charles
Bronson) chopping wood for food, he is a veteran gunfighter who has taken part
in the range wars for money but has fallen on hard times. After killing the Johnson Brothers in a
gunfight the smartly dressed Lee (Robert Vaughn) is on the run and looking for
somewhere to hide, what would be better than to hide out in the middle of a small
war? What Chris doesn’t know is that this slick combatant is having a crisis of
confidence! The final and seventh member
of the group is the young, good looking, ex dirt farmer Chico (German actor
Horst Buchholz) who is trying desperately to prove himself. This miscellaneous collection of human kind
then set out across the border to our small village in Mexico scare away the
Bandidos and the fun really starts.
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| Lee. |
Filmed in
Cuernavaca and EStudios Churbuso Mexico this was alleged to be the last great
western before Leone reinvented the genre (see A Fistful
of Dollars and the Spaghetti Western). John Sturges had directed westerns prior to this
film including Gunfight
at the OK Corral in 1957 where Burt Lancaster teams up with Kirk
Douglas to gun down some bad men. Although nearly all the main cast in The Magnificent Seven are now household
names, at the time only Brynner was well known having recently won an Academy
Award for The King and I (1956) and was
also starring opposite Charlton Heston in the biblical epic The Ten Commandments the same year. But
other than perhaps Brad Dexter all the rest went on to enjoy very successful
careers in the movie industry. McQueen, Coburn and Bronson would team up with
the director again in 1963’s The Great
Escape, which made Steve McQueen a superstar. With the death of Eli Wallach in 2014, Robert
Vaughn is the last living main cast member.
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| Chico. |
Other than to say that this magnificent western is the one to pass down
to your children, as I did with my son, I will end by paraphrasing the film
notes that are included with the “ultimate DVD edition”. It explains that what
sets The Magnificent Seven apart from
the westerns that preceded it is the fallibility and fatality of the
characters. It’s the end of an era, and
they are painfully aware that there breed is become obsolete. They also
recognise too late what they have missed out on along the way, a permanent home,
someone to settle down with, and even perhaps children. Quite simple, they have
no place in a world that is rejecting their kind. They take the job of
defending the village not merely because they are broke, but because this is
there life, their very identity. And they will sacrifice themselves rather than
be any less than they have always been - what noble thoughts are these;
certainly they would not be found in the spaghetti westerns that followed the
making of this memorable movie. For
western fans of all ages, this is the film to watch as a prime example of what
was sometimes a great tradition: the American Western movie, never has it been done
better.
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| Calvera. |
