Directed by
Budd Boetticher
USA 19
Not many Westerns can claim to be original. Seven Men from Now can. Its making, for the B-picture arm of John Wayne's Batjac company, was a modest enterprise. The screenwriter, Burt Kennedy, was just starting out; the director, Budd Boetticher, was a matador-turned-filmmaker with only one film of distinction (The Bullfighter and the Lady) in a journeyman career; the star, Randolph Scott, was regarded as "over the hill." Yet the three men's talents blended uncannily, producing not just a terrific Western but a cinema masterpiece--an ironical, beautifully spare bit of storytelling that became the ideal showcase for Scott's sandy reticence.
You don't want anybody synopsizing the story for you; there's little of it,
really, yet how it's told makes it complex and compelling. We know, from a
memorable first scene, that Scott is hunting down seven men who did something
terrible. He will be thrown together with several other characters, including
Lee Marvin as an affable but deadly rascal with whom he shares some history.
Everybody has private reasons to be traveling through Apache country. Savor
every syllable of the laconic dialogue, what people say and what they don't
quite say--what they think they understand about one another's motives, except
that that understanding keeps getting rearranged.
Seven Men from Now went missing after Wayne's death in 1979 threw the Batjac
library into limbo. (Its success had inspired Scott, Boetticher, and Kennedy
to collaborate on three other remarkable Westerns--The Tall T (1957),
Ride
Lonesome (1959), and Comanche Station (1960)--which, because they weren't made
for Batjac, we've had little trouble seeing over the years.) The movie became
legendary, a Holy Grail for film buffs.
Excerpt from Richard T. Jameson's review found HERE
Theatrical Release: August 4th, 1956
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DVD Review: Paramount - Region 1 - NTSC
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| Distribution | Paramount Home Video - Region 1 - NTSC | |
| Runtime | 1:17:57 | |
| Video | 1.78:1
Original Aspect Ratio Average Bitrate: 6.83 mb/s NTSC 720x480 29.97 f/s |
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NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes. |
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| Audio | English (Dolby Digital 2.0) | |
| Subtitles | English, None | |
| Features |
Release Information:
Edition Details: • Commentary
by: James Kitses, film historian and author of "Horizons West: Anthony
Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah"
•The John Wayne Stock Company: Gail Russell |
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| Comments: |
Although the image is not 'stupendous' it is certainly better than average. It shows some digital noise/dirt but is acceptably sharp. Colors are a shade faded but overall it is superior than my expectations. What is fabulous about this disc are both the illuminating commentary and the featurette which lasts almost an hour (divided into segments). More importantly than all of this is that the film has been released to DVD - western fans have been more than patient for some of the cream of the genre, namely in the form of Boetticher/Scott entries. Well, it is finally here and in the form of a 'Special Collectors Edition'. Let's hope Comanche Station, Ride Lonesome and more are on there way soon! |
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Recommended Reading for Western Genre Fans (CLICK COVERS or TITLES for more information)
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The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in
the Hollywood Western (Cinema and Society) by Michael Coyne |
The Invention of the Western Film : A Cultural
History of the Genre's First Half Century (Genres in American Cinema S.) by Scott Simmon |
The Searchers (Bfi Film Classics) by Edward Buscombe |
The Western Genre by John Saunders |
Westerns: Films through History (AFI
Film Readers) by Janet Walker |
The Encyclopedia of Westerns (The Facts on File
Film Reference Library) by Herb Fagen, Tom Selleck |
Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in
Twentieth-Century America by Richard Slotkin |
The Western (Inside Film) by David Lusted |
Red River (Bfi Film Classics) by Suzanne Liandrat-Guigues |
Check out more in "The Library"
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| Distribution | Paramount Home Video - Region 1 - NTSC | |
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