The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Information From IMDb

Plot Summary
A remake of "The Seven Samurai." Seven men are picked to guard a Mexican village from Banditos that come every now and then to take whatever the town has grown since their last visit. When they are hired, they go to the town and teach the villagers how to defend themselves. When the leader of the bandits come, they fight him and his men off. the second time he comes the villagers give the seven to them, due to a heated argument. The leader of the bandits take their guns and throw them out of town he gives them horses and gives their guns back to them when they are far out of town. The seven decide that they aren't going to run, and head back to the village for a final showdown.
Written by Chase Ard

Full Cast
Yul Brynner ... Chris Adams
Eli Wallach ... Calvera
Steve McQueen ... Vin
Charles Bronson ... Bernardo O'Reilly
Robert Vaughn ... Lee
Brad Dexter ... Harry Luck
James Coburn ... Britt
Horst Buchholz ... Chico
Jorge Martínez de Hoyos ... Hilario (as Jorge Martinez de Hoyas)
Vladimir Sokoloff ... Old man
Rosenda Monteros ... Petra
Rico Alaniz ... Sotero
Pepe Hern
Natividad Vacío ... Miguel (as Natividad Vacio)
Mario Navarro
Danny Bravo
John A. Alonzo ... Tomas (as John Alonso)
Enrique Lucero
Alex Montoya
Robert J. Wilke ... Wallace (as Robert Wilke)
Val Avery ... Henry (corset salesman)
Whit Bissell ... Chamlee (undertaker)
Bing Russell ... Robert, (Henry's traveling companion)
Roberto Contreras ... Villager (uncredited)
Valentin de Vargas ... Calvera henchman (uncredited)
Larry Duran ... (uncredited)
Joseph Ruskin ... Filene (uncredited)

Writing credits
Akira Kurosawa (screenplay "Shichinin no samurai") uncredited &
Shinobu Hashimoto (screenplay "Shichinin no samurai") uncredited &
Hideo Oguni (screenplay "Shichinin no samurai") uncredited
William Roberts (screenplay)
Walter Bernstein uncredited and
Walter Newman uncredited

Also Produced by
Walter Mirisch .... executive producer
Lou Morheim .... associate producer

Original Music
Elmer Bernstein

Trivia
* Robert Vaughn played the role of Lee in the film. He later came back to star in the TV series "The Magnificent Seven" (1998) playing Judge Oren Travis.

* Elmer Bernstein, whose score for this movie is one of the best-known ever composed, also wrote the score for the parody of this film, ¡Three Amigos! (1986).

* Yul Brynner was married on the set; the celebration used many of the same props as the fiesta scene.

* The film was cast quickly to beat an actor's strike.

* Mexican censors required the peasants to always be wearing clean clothes.

* Walter Bernstein did the original adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's film (Shichinin no samurai (1954)) but it wasn't used. Walter Newman wrote the screenplay that is substantially what you see on screen.

* Steve McQueen wanted to act in this film but couldn't at first because the schedule of his TV series, "Wanted: Dead or Alive" (1958), wouldn't allow it. He crashed a car and while he was "out sick", he shot this film.

* Composer John Williams was a member of the orchestra that recorded Elmer Bernstein's score; he played the piano.

* James Coburn's friend Robert Vaughn recommended him to director John Sturges for the last remaining lead, the role of Britt. Sturges said he needed a Gary Cooper type of actor, and Vaughn said Coburn was the actor he needed.

* James Coburn (Britt) and Robert Vaughn (Lee) have only 11 and 16 lines in the entire film respectively. Although they were close friends for almost fifty years, this is their only film together.

* Yul Brynner was concerned to make sure he always appeared substantially taller than Steve McQueen, to the point of making a little mound of earth and standing on it in all their shots together. McQueen, for his part, casually kicked at the mound every time he passed by it.

* Pay close attention to Eli Wallach whenever he handles his gun. Whenever he puts the gun back into his holster, he always looks down at it. That was because Wallach wasn't used to drawing the weapon and didn't want to look foolish by missing the holster while putting his gun back, as Wallach would admit in the DVD Documentary.

* According to Eli Wallach's autobiography, Yul Brynner had a major problem with what he perceived as Steve McQueen's trying to upstage him. According to Wallach, McQueen would do things when on screen with Brynner to draw attention to his character. Examples were his shaking of the shotgun shells and taking off his hat to check the sun during the hearse scene and leaning off his horse to dip his hat in the river when the Seven cross into Mexico. Brynner was supposedly so worried about McQueen stealing his limelight in scenes that he hired an assistant to count the number of times McQueen touched his own hat when he [Brynner] was speaking.

* Body count: 55

* George Peppard was first considered for the role of Vin.

* Sterling Hayden was originally supposed to play the knife expert, Britt. Hayden dropped out for unknown reasons, so John Sturges sent out an extensive casting call. Robert Vaughn (Lee) recommended old schoolmate and friend James Coburn for the role. Vaughn and Coburn helped each other get roles throughout the rest of Coburn's life.

* When filming began in Mexico, problems arose with the local censors, who demanded changes to the ways that the Mexican villagers would be portrayed. Walter Newman, who had written the screenplay, was asked to travel to the location to make the necessary script revisions, but refused. The changes written in by William Roberts were deemed significant enough to merit him a co-writing credit. Newman refused to share the credit, though, and had his name removed from the film entirely.

* A young Gene Wilder auditioned for the role of Vin.

* James Coburn was a big fan of Shichinin no samurai (1954) and his favorite role in that film was the character that he ended up playing in the Americanized version.

* According to the DVD notes, both John Ireland and Sterling Hayden were approached for the role of Britt.

* Despite some credit listings, Natividad Vacío plays Miguel, not Tomas, and John A. Alonzo (billed as John Alonso) plays Tomas, not Miguel.

Goofs
* Continuity: In the opening scene, when Calvera is complaining about religion, he takes the cup to drink in his left hand. As he sits at the table and finishes complaining, the cup is switches to his right hand.

* Continuity: As Chris and Vin ride the hearse back from the cemetery you can see one of the tassels fall from the head of the horse on the left. In the next shot the horses are coming around a corner and the tassel is back in place.

* Continuity: Just before the first confrontation with Calvera, Chris removes the loop holding his six-gun in his holster twice.

* Continuity: When Calvera gives the "adios" command to send the seven out of town, he waves his right hand and starts walking away from a pole. In the very next shot (from behind) he is shown still leaning against the pole.

* Continuity: Just before Vin walks away from the craps table in the bar, the cowboy at the end of the table rolls the dice. In the very next shot the same cowboy is shown throwing the dice again without having retrieved them.

* Continuity: After Britt throws the knife into the cowboy in the rail yard, two train engineers are seen leaning out of the engine's window observing the scene. In the next shot, one of the engineers has moved to the platform between the engine and the tender car.

* Continuity: The first man Calvera kills near the beginning of the movie has no wounds on his back after being shot and falling to the ground. When the villagers run to the body to look at the man, there are two wounds on his back.

* Continuity: After Chris delivers the final line, Vin and Chris turn around and ride over the hill - Chris is riding on the right. After a brief cut away, the camera cuts back to them riding into the distance and Chris is now on the left.

* Boom mic visible: The boom shadow can clearly be seen moving from right to left as Sotero turns while addressing his fellow villagers after Calvera's first visit near the opening of the movie.

* Continuity: When Calvera and his gang first ride into town in the beginning of the movie, they are seen taking chickens and food. When they ride out of town, they do not have any of the loot with them.

* Continuity: After Calvera and his men are driven from the village the first time, there is a sequence in which three of his men start taking potshots at the villagers from the trees. One of these shots strikes Chico's hat and knocks it off his head. He even sticks a finger through the hole after retrieving it, however in a scene just a couple minutes later, Petra (the Mexican girl) is talking with Chico. We can see there is no bullet hole in the front of his hat and at one point, he turns his head 180 degrees in order to look behind him and there is clearly no bullet hole in the back of his hat, either. It has simply disappeared.

* Factual errors: Chris tells Harry Luck that the job pays a gold eagle plus room and board. But the payment offered was $20. An eagle was the $10 gold coin; the $20 gold coin was the "double eagle."

* Factual errors: In the last scene, when the three village boys put flowers on Bernardo's grave, the middle boy makes the sign of the cross from right to left, as they do in the Eastern Orthodox church. The other boys do it correctly, from left to right.

* Anachronisms: At the beginning of the scene when Vin is climbing the hill and chatting with one of the villagers, a radio tower is visible on one of the background mountains behind the villager.

Filming locations
Churubusco Studios, Mexico City, México D.F., Mexico (studio)
Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico (desert) (sets)
Durango, Mexico
Estudios Churubusco Azteca, Mexico City, México D.F., Mexico (studio)
Mexico City, México D.F., Mexico
México D.F., Mexico

The Magnificent Seven is a 1960 American Western film directed by John Sturges
and starring Charles Bronson, Yul Brynner, Horst Buchholz, James Coburn,
Brad Dexter, Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, and Eli Wallach.

The film is an Old West-style remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954
Japanese masterpiece Seven Samurai.
Brynner, McQueen, Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn,
James Coburn, and Brad Dexter portray the title characters,
a group of seven gunfighters hired to protect a small village in Mexico
from a group of marauding bandits and their leader (Wallach).
The film's musical score was composed by Elmer Bernstein.

In 2013, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
by the Library of Congress as being "culturally,
historically, or aesthetically significant"

Pre-production
Yul Brynner approached producer Walter Mirisch with the idea of remaking Kurosawa's famous samurai film. But once Mirisch had acquired the rights from Japan's Toho Studios, and finalized a distribution deal with United Artists, Brynner was sued for breach of contract by actor Anthony Quinn, who claimed that he and Brynner had developed the concept together and had worked out many of the film's details before the two had a falling-out. Quinn ultimately lost his claim, because there was nothing in writing.
Script credit was a subject of contention. Associate producer Lou Morheim commissioned Walter Bernstein, a blacklisted scriptwriter, to produce the first draft "faithfully" adapted from the original script written by Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni and Akira Kurosawa; when executive producer Walter Mirisch and Brynner took over the production, they brought on Walter Newman, whose version "is largely what's on screen." When Newman was unavailable to be on-site during the film's principal photography in Mexico, William Roberts was hired, in part to make changes required by Mexican censors. When Roberts asked the Writers Guild of America for a co-credit, Newman asked that his name be removed from the credits.

Production
Filming began on March 1, 1960, on location in Mexico, where both the village and the U.S. border town were built for the film. The location filming was in Cuernavaca, Durango, and Tepoztlán and at the Churubusco Studios.The first scene shot was the first part of the six gunfighters' journey to the Mexican village, prior to Chico being brought into the group.

During filming there was considerable tension between Brynner and McQueen, who was displeased at his character having only seven lines of dialogue in the original shooting script. To compensate, McQueen took numerous opportunities to upstage Brynner and draw attention to himself, including shielding his eyes with his hat, flipping a coin during one of Brynner's speeches, rattling his shotgun shells, and hanging low from his horse to drink from a stream. Brynner, who was only half an inch taller than McQueen, would often build up a little mound of earth to stand on when the two actors were on camera together, only to have McQueen surreptitiously kick the dirt out of place before retakes. When newspapers started reporting on the altercations on set between the two, Brynner issued a press statement, declaring, "I never feud with actors. I feud with studios."Years later Buchholz said Brynner had put a stop to McQueen's antics by telling him the next time he tried his upstaging tricks he, Brynner, would simply remove his hat to get back the spotlight for good (Brynner is one of the most legendary bald men in film history.)
The film was shot in Panavision, an anamorphic format.

Score
The film's score is by Elmer Bernstein. Along with the iconic main theme and effective support of the story line, the score also contains allusions to twentieth-century symphonic works, such as the reference to Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, second movement, in the tense quiet scene just before the shoot out. The original soundtrack was not released at the time until reused and rerecorded by Bernstein for the soundtrack of Return of the Seven. Electric guitar cover versions by Al Caiola in the U.S. and John Barry[15] in the U.K. were successful on the popular charts.[16] A vocal theme not written by Bernstein was used in a trailer.
In 1994, James Sedares conducted a re-recording of the score performed by The Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, which also included a suite from Bernstein's score for The Hallelujah Trail, issued by Koch Records; Bernstein himself conducted the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for a performance released by RCA in 1997, but the original film soundtrack was not released until the following year by Rykodisc. (Varèse Sarabande reissued this album in 2004.)

Main Title and Calvera (3:56)
Council (3:14)
Quest (1:00)
Strange Funeral/After The Brawl (6:48)
Vins Luck (2:03)
And Then There Were Two (1:45)
Fiesta (1:11)
Stalking (1:20)
Worst Shot (3:02)
The Journey (4:39)
Toro (3:24)
Training (1:27)
Calvera's Return (2:37)
Calvera Routed (1:49)
Ambush (3:10)
Bernardo (3:33)
Surprise (2:08)
Defeat (3:26)
Crossroads (4:47)
Harry's Mistake (2:48)
Calvera Killed (3:33)
Finale (3:27)

Bernstein's score has frequently been quoted in the media and popular culture. Starting in 1963, the theme was used in commercials in the U.S. for Marlboro cigarettes. A similar-sounding (but different) tune was used for Victoria Bitter beer in Australia. The theme was included in the James Bond film Moonraker.
Other uses include in the 2004 documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11; in the 2005 film The Ringer; as entrance music for the British band James, as well as episodes of The Simpsons that had a "Western" theme (mainly in the episode titled "Dude, Where's My Ranch?"). The opening horn riff in Arthur Conley's 1967 hit "Sweet Soul Music" is borrowed from the theme. Canadian band Kon Kan use the opening bars of the theme in their single "I Beg Your Pardon". Celtic Football Club (Glasgow, Scotland) used the theme music whenever Henrik Larsson scored a goal.
The Cheers episode "Diane Chambers Day" (season 4, episode 22) revolves around the bar denizens being invited to watch The Magnificent Seven, and ends with them singing an a cappella version of the theme.
The Mick Jones 1980s band Big Audio Dynamite covered the song as "Keep off the Grass" (although this cover was not officially released). In 1995, the KLF also did a drum and bass cover of the main title as "The Magnificent"; it was released under the group alias One World Orchestra on the charity compilation The Help Album.
In 1992, the main theme of The Magnificent Seven came into use on a section of the Euro Disneyland Railroad at Disneyland Paris. Portions of the theme play as the train exits the Grand Canyon diorama tunnel behind Phantom Manor, enters Frontierland, and travels along the bank of the Rivers of the Far West.
The "Main Title" was used as an intro tune on many nights of Bruce Springsteen's 2012 Wrecking Ball Tour. The theme was played as the E Street Band entered the stage, adding to the dramatic atmosphere in the stadium.
Reception[edit]
Howard Thompson of The New York Times called the film a "pallid, pretentious and overlong reflection of the Japanese original"; according to Thompson, "don't expect anything like the ice-cold suspense, the superb juxtaposition of revealing human vignettes and especially the pile-driver tempo of the first Seven." According to Variety magazine's December 31, 1960 review, "Until the women and children arrive on the scene about two-thirds of the way through, The Magnificent Seven is a rip-roaring rootin' tootin' western with lots of bite and tang and old-fashioned abandon. The last third is downhill, a long and cluttered anti-climax in which The Magnificent Seven grow slightly too magnificent for comfort." Akira Kurosawa, however, was reportedly so impressed by the film that he presented John Sturges with a sword.
At the 33rd Academy Awards, the score was nominated for Best Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, losing to Ernest Gold's score for Exodus. Many decades later, however, the score for The Magnificent Seven was listed at No. 8 on the American Film Institute's list of the top 25 American film scores.
The film has grown greatly in esteem since its release, largely due to its cast (several of whom were to go on to become superstars over the decade following its release) and its music score. As of January 29, 2017, it has a freshness rating of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes based on ratings of 40 critics. It is the second most shown film in U.S. television history, behind only The Wizard of Oz The film is also ranked No. 79 on the AFI's list of American cinema's 100 most-thrilling films.

Sequels and adaptations
The film was a box office disappointment in the United States, but proved to be such a smash hit in Europe that it ultimately made a profit. Three sequels were eventually made: Return of the Seven (1966), Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969), and The Magnificent Seven Ride (1972). None were as successful as the original film.
The film also inspired a television series, The Magnificent Seven, which ran from 1998 to 2000. Robert Vaughn was a recurring guest star, a judge who hires the seven to protect the town in which his widowed daughter-in-law and his grandson live.
The 1980s action-adventure series The A-Team was initially devised as a combination of The Dirty Dozen and The Magnificent Seven. The show's pilot film plays much on the plot of The Magnificent Seven, and there are similar plot echoes in various other episodes. James Coburn was originally approached to play John "Hannibal" Smith, the team's leader, a role that ultimately went to George Peppard in the series; and Robert Vaughn was added to the cast in the final season as part of a revamp attempt to boost fading ratings.
A remake of the film was released on September 23, 2016, with Antoine Fuqua directing and Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Byung-hun, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier and Peter Sarsgaard starring.

A Classic film, which was classic only as the original.
The sequels going gradually downhill.
Yul Bynner cast as the unlikely lead,
but being exceptional at the part.
What a great movie, that made stars out of some,
and some stars even greater.
Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn all shone.
Great traditional storyline, made even better as a western.
John Sturges the Director made this film,
in between his two Earp movies,
Gunfight At OK Corral, and Hour Of The Gun.

Unforgettable Music from Elmer Bernstein,
who incidentally, had the young John Williams,
in the orchestra, playing piano!

I have not seen, The Seven Samurai,
but I know some of our members have