I recently saw the Magnificent Seven, and while I thought it was a great movie and one of the best westerns I’ve seen, I was extremely puzzled by two things.
Why would Calvera, after capturing the Mag 7, give them their guns back? I know he thought they wouldn’t come back, but come on, that’s just asking for trouble…
Why would the Mag 7 renege on their implicit agreement with Calvera? They were captured and could easily have been killed by Calvera, but were instead treated humanely, allowed to leave with their horses, and eventually given back their guns. Implied in this is the Mag 7 not coming back to start up the gunfight again. It seems a very serious breach of honor to use the enemy’s magnanimity against him, especially when you are silently agreeing not to come back. This makes Calvera seem much more honorable than the Mag 7, which is very odd indeed.
Don’t know if it will help, but try watching the original by Kirasawa. As I recall, the title is “Yojimbo”. Might have something to do with the way Samuri do business.
I haven’t seen either, but have the japanese one on tape, waiting till I get a chance to see it. (In other words, like in most every other thread I post to, I haven’t the faintist idea of what I’m talking about. )
Frostee Rucker? Sounds like a nice ice-cream treat. You might very well ask, “I’ll have a Frostee Rucker, please.” Of course, you’ll want to hold the nuts.
Actually, it was The Seven Samurai, by Kurosawa. Yojimbo was re-made as A Fist Full of Dollars, and was itself based loosely on Red Harvest, a novel by Dashiell Hammet.
1(a). Contempt. “You’re a bunch of losers, and you can’t hurt me.”
1(b). To Calvera they’re mercenaries with no commitment to anyone but themselves. Hence his confusion just before he died.
2(a). See 1(a).
2(b). While they might have had an “implicit agreement” with Calvera, they had a contract with the villagers. So something had to be reneged on (besides my grammar), and they chose to renege on the implied agreement. Besides, the Code of the West™ required honoring the contract.
Just as well, because riding off into the sunrise would have been kind of anticlimactic.
I suppose… I think letting them go without their guns would have achieved the same ‘not-making-any-enemies’ kick he seemed to espouse without taking such a god-awful risk. And the contempt angle doesn’t play too well with me, because the Mag 7 did drive off Calvera’s first attempt, even outnumbered 30 to 7, killing 10+ of his men without taking a loss. I think a healthy respect would have been earned by this…
But I would think that since the villagers broke the contract first (by letting Calvera in and essentially betraying the Mag 7), that this would void the contract, or at least make it subordinate to the implicit agreement with Calvera, around which he treated them quite generously and honorably. I’d honor my deal with honorable bandit over treacherous villagers any day…
Group of Dudes with guns that time is passing by…
3 Musketeer Crede… “One for all and all for One”
No more Buffalo, No more Bounties, No more Wars to Fight
Now, No more Westerns, just Computer-image garbage…
See “Tom Horn” starring Steve Mcqueen,based on True Story
My take: none of The Seven begin the movie as entirely admirable people – they are killers, guns-for-hire. Each takes the commission from the villagers for their own reasons (pity, the money, a desire to make a reputation, a mistaken belief that there is treasure, or just lack of anything better to do) but whatever the reason, it isn’t pure altruism.
While in the village, they get to know the simple, honest peasants, and understand their life. They also, for the first time, feel what it is to be admired for doing good, rather than feared.
When Calvera treats them well, he is treating them as equals – as colleagues – and extends to them a professional courtesy. Initially The Seven accept this, but then they realise that dealing with Calvera in this way – going back to what they were before – is impossible. Though the villagers betrayed them, it was through fear of Calvera. More, it was through fear of The Seven themselves. In their time in the village, The Seven have found something that they had forgotten that they’d ever lost: self-respect. Now that they’ve found it, they can’t give it up. So they go back to defend the village. Not because of the deal with the villagers, or the deal with Calvera. But because it’s the right thing to do, and because the only way to keep the self-respect that they’ve found is to prove to the villagers that they are better than Calvera.
Actually, Chris and Vin’s introduction into the story has them riding shotgun up to Boot Hill with the dead “Indian.” Rather honorable to me.
And Lee (Robert Vaughn) does not survive the battle.
Regarding the “agreement” with Calvera. You say what you can to come out alive. Its like surrendering in wartime. You wave the white flag but its still a soldiers duty to escape captivity. And fight the same enemy that took him alive.
That’s a better explanation than anything I could have come up with, but it doesn’t seem to me that they were all that wanting of admiration before their tour of duty in the village… I mean, Yul Brynner’s character at the beginning did a heroic type of action, and some of the chaps there were pretty appreciative and admiring (heck, that’s why the kid was so eager to join him).
But yeah, I can see how pride and self-respect could make them want to prove themselves to the townspeople (and themselves), and perhaps this was judged to be more important than what honor would dictate (which to me would be accepting the terms of surrender).
And the same reasoning regarding 2) in the OP. Consider the following exchange between Pike (William Holden) and Dutch (Ernest Borgnine) in The Wild Bunch:
Dutch: Damn that Deke Thornton to Hell!
Pike: What would you do in his place? He gave his word.
Dutch: Gave his word to a railroad.
Pike: It’s his word!
Dutch: That ain’t what counts. It’s who you give it to!
You’re right, of course, up to a point at least (and this reply is to jimpatro as well) – I was trying to deal with the Seven as a unit (which I now see I didn’t entirely achieve :rolleyes: ) because:
a) that was how you’d phrased the OP;
b) if I’d discussed each character’s motivation individually it would have turned into an essay and got unneccessarily complicated; and
c) it’s at least two years since I last saw the film, and I can’t trust my memory that far
I think the point about Chris (Yul Brynner) and Vin (Steve McQueen) is that while at the beginning of the film they are, if you like, “admirable” characters (for storytelling reasons they have to be, to engage the audience) they quite explicitly don’t see themselves as admirable. See how hard they try to dissuade the hero-worshipping Chico from following their bad example. I’m thinking in particular of a scene (which I can’t quite remember, or find the quote on the web) where Lee (Robert Vaughn) is itemising the “benefits” of their lifestyle – something like:
“Insults you’ll accept: none. Men you back down from: none. Enemies: none.”
Chico’s really getting into it, but Vin continues:
“Home: none. Wife: none. Kids: … none.”
In a sense, the film act almost as a morality play – only three survive: Chris and Vin were seen from the first to have goodness within them, and at the end we can imagine them riding away to live better lives in the future (or at least no worse); Chico stays behind with the girl, turning aside from a life of violence.
The others? My memory’s failing me again, so I don’t remember all of their situations, but it seems to me that they had nothing really to go back to: their only means of redemption (within the scope of the film, anyway) was to die in a state of grace – fighting a just fight. Death would be what they came to pretty soon anyway, and at least this way someone would put flowers on their graves. Like the man said: You can’t win. You can’t break even. And you can’t stay out of the game.
Or as Chris puts it: “The old man was right. Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose.”
Good movie; there was also a pretty good tv-movie called “Mr. Horn”, with David Carradine.
Maybe some rainy day I’ll watch both The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven. Incidentally, the guy two husbands before me (my former wife’s third of five husbands) was a stuntman in The Magnificent Seven; I think he goes off a horse over a wall.
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