May 26 2010
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I have not seen “The Blooming Seven” in widescreen since I first saw it in the theatre in 1960. I have been watching it in pan & scan for about 40 years now. It is my celebrated motion narrate. Seeing it in widescreen opened current vistas for me. It finaly seems like the tremendous scale yet personal drama that it always deserved to be. I can greater luxuriate in the composition of the different camera frames by noticing facial expressions and the like that have gone unnoticed for years. There is more character development here than I even imagined. There is more beauty and detail to the landscape unto which the record unfolds. The film has now at last taken on legendary proportions thanks to this format. Yul Brynner as Chris, Steve McQueen as Vin, Charles Bronson as O’Reilly, Robert Vaughn as Lee, Brad Dexter as Harry Luck, James Coburn as Britt and Horst Buchholz as Chico are all imbedded into the psyche of anyone who ever saw this movie and felt its emotional impact. These are valid mask heroes.
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There is something very magical about this film. This is different from every other Western that came before it. I have it is the nature of the seven gunfighters, their motives for that one chance at gallantry and redemption. That combined with the contrivance the sage is visually told makes for its greatness. It teaches us something about nobility, dignity and devotion. The hearse-ride taken up to Boot Hill with Yul Brynner driving and Steve McQueen riding shotgun sets the stage and tone for the entire film. Images such as when Charles Bronson, is curved over with a bullet inside and the three exiguous Mexican boys clutch him crying out his name while in his death throes bring a poke to the gape. In another the viewer reflects along with Yul Brynner as he takes the uninteresting James Coburn’s knife out of the adobe wall and folds it gently in his hand. These are heart rendering and indelible images. Even Eli Wallach as the bandit Calvera gets his moment of pathos. After being mortally wounded by Yul Brynner’s bullet, Calvera can not occupy that the seven came support to assign the village even after the villagers told them that they did not want their benefit anymore. “You came attend. A man like you. Why? ” asks Calvera as he dies. Yul Brynner has no acknowledge for him. It was as if Brynner had committed some sacrilege.
Director John Sturges captured the ambiguities of the human spirit in this film. Honest as he directed “The Colossal Hurry,” Sturges’ directorial style is so collected that his enjoy storytelling glosses good over the depth and complexity of his fill work. The ultimate shame is that all Sturges’ profoundness is all lawful up there on the mask. He literally outdoes himself along with a microscopic befriend from Elmer Bernstein’s earn and William Roberts’ script. Bernstein’s insertion of expeditiously tempo snippets here and there into the net advances the film and pulls the viewer proper into the legend with an emotional fervor along with his unforgettable main title theme. William Roberts’ script is so paunchy of memorable and lively dialogue that it too smoothly advances the tale with ease and shear magnetism playing on our emotions.
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For me Yul Brynner was the epitome of `cool’ and aplomb. From his sad gray and unlit outfit down to the tip of his thin cheroot he was the kind of man others perceive up to but sustain their distance. Yul Brynner as Chris, was a man of few words and often communicated by the mere gesture of the hand. Of the seven, he was the cohesive element that drew them together simply by his demeanor. The aura of his worldliness beckoned them all to the location he was heading. It was the same dwelling they were all going. He was honest the first to watch it. Brynner too was the cohesive element that kept them all together. Brynner was the one who followed some unwritten code of honor that is only alluded to in a few passages. McQueen was perfect as the gunfighter who was “honest drifting” and signed on with Brynner. The levelheaded McQueen represents the other characters’ realizations one by one as they join. James Coburn was perfect, as the stoic knife throwing Britt, who lived only for the thrill of the moment. Charles Bronson as O’Reilly played his stoically rugged but sympathetic role better than any actor could have. Bronson had a new visual presence whose kind facial expressions counterbalanced his pockmark face and strong physique. Bronson was a conundrum unto himself and perfect for the role. Brad Dexter’s performance as the unlucky fortune hunter has gone unrecognized. He was the least righteous of the seven and died the mercenary that he was, yet there is some nobility to one’s profession in that. Unruffled, he gains our sympathy after returning in the clutch and saves his friend Chris and in turn is killed. Dying in the arms of his friend, Chris lets him go to the grave with a lie. Robert Vaughn’s character was probably the most challenging of the seven. His enigmatic portrayal of Lee the tormented soul and not really the coward he labeled himself somehow never stood out. Only his act of redemption, his gunplay and death during the finale lingers. Vaughn’s portrayal is a success because as he said he was “the coward hiding out in the middle of a battlefield” and at that he succeeded. Horst Buchholz gave an energetic and bravura performance the only one of the seven that had not yet been corrupted by the world. At the destroy he symbolically hangs his guns up and roles up his sleeves. Brynner and McQueen say that “only the farmers have won” and they lost. As they lag off into conceal immortality I consider we all won.
Yul Brynner, support in the tedious 1950’s, wanted to sigh an American version of the SEVEN SAMURAI, as an western. So he bought up the movie rights. He wanted to cast Anthony Quinn in the lead, as Chris. Brynner had been directed by Quinn in the remake of THE BUCCANEER. Quinn would have been sizable as Chris, the leader of the Seven; and what a different film it would have been. But, alas, Brynner himself took the fraction, and effect his occupy tag of individuality on it. He walked like a bad between a panther and a ballet dancer; light on the balls of his feet. Ironically, as an actor, he was dreary on the scheme, and not primitive to Westerns. But artistically, this was never apparent in the finished film.
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Many of the Seven’s actors had seen the Kurosawa film, and they were very exasperated about transferring it to the American West. Eli Wallach, as Calvera, in honest a few short scenes, found both the humor and the cruelty in the bandit chieftan. His accent and speech pattern were fairly authentic; more so certainly than the young German actor, Horst Buchholz, endeavoring to secure a southwestern/Texan/Mexican narrate. Director, John Sturges, had tall hopes for Horst; the camera loved him. But it was the trio of studs, Steve McQueen as Vin, Charles Bronson as O’Reilly, and James Coburn as Britt, that dominated the frame.
Steve McQueen, wearing skin-tight leather stovepipe chaps, spent a lot of time finding ways to upstage Yul Brynner. There was a rumor that he would have preferred playing Chico, the Buchholz character. McQueen’s manic physical performance, lightning speedy with a pistol and a quip, seemed to work well for him, and it gave him more than his portion of focus. His Vin emerged as lethal, lean, and hungry; yet weary of the gunfighter’s dilemma, and envious of the simplicity and the honor of the peasants fighting for their families and their homes.
James Coburn, as Britt, was laconic and hazardous, and living on the edge of his blade; competing mostly with himself for the next tall thrill. Coburn got the allotment he wanted, and though he was given minimal dialogue, his deliveries were classic. This place the mold for his future career.
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Charles Bronson as Bernardo O’Reilly, half-Irish, half Mexican, was solid as a rock; an experienced stone killer, and yet collected a soft touch for the children of the village. His death scene touched us. He found the pulse of his character, and he was both hazardous and decent.
Robert Vaughn, as Lee, seemed unfortunate and lost. His section had been rewritten, and expanded for him. Yet he seemed ill-suited for the allotment, and the genre. Even his costume seemed ill-fitting. Section of the quandary was that his characters’ inability to participate in the first couple of firefights left us with puny sympathy for him. Later then, in his scene with the peasants, in which he admitted his horror, the emotions seemed forced and poorly conceived. His last moment heroics and death did shrimp to balance the scales.
Brad Dexter was nearly invisible. He is the one actor in trivia games no one can remember. His character, Harry Luck, with twice the dialogue as Coburn, paled in comparison. Section of it was Dexter himself. He was a bland, middle-of-the-road, B-Movie heavy, and it was weird to cast him, and thrust him in amongst all of those young turks. He did a credible job, but he was completely outshined by the future dapper stars.
Vladimir Sokoloff, as the village’s “traditional man”, gave such a astonishing and touching performance, one did not realize the actor was not Latino. Like Eli Wallach, his talent as an actor transcended ethnic boundaries.
John Sturges, a customary director of westerns, found honest the proper balance of action and character. Mexican farmers substituted radiant for the novel Japanese farmers. And brigands, or bandits, are cleave from the same faulty mold no matter what the era, or geography. Kurosawa’s classic runs like 3 hours in length, and it gave us grand more in-depth character development; so that when these samurai began to die, we cared about them. In 1959, when SEVEN was filmed, three hour westerns were a non-existant species. Elmer Bernstein’s musical glean was revolutionary, and its pounding stacatto beat has become one of the most recognized pieces of music ever created for film.
This western, always listed in the top 50 best westerns, is a must-see. And the DVD version, in widescreen, is crisp and positive and shimmering, and it helps us to recapture that magical feeling we had the first time we saw this film in a movie theatre.
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