MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 4
• Screen: Pan and Scan
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Cinemascope)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Nominated Best Original Score - 1964 (Henry Mancini)
•     Nominated Best Drama or Comedy Score - 1960 (Elmer Bernstein)

• Hollywood Foreign Press Association

•     Won New Star of the Year - Female - 1963 (Ursula Andress)
•     Nominated Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comed - 1964 (Peter Sellers)

• Telluride Film Festival

•     Film Presented - 1992

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Clint Eastwood - The Man with No Name
       Eli Wallach - Calvera
       Gian Maria Volonte - Ramon Rojo
       Capucine - Simone Clouseau
       Bernard Lee - M
       Anthony Dawson - Prof. Dent
       Antonio Prieto - Benito Rojo
       Colin Gordon - Tucker
       Benny Reeves - Rubio
       James Lanphier - Saloud
       Guy Thomajan - Artoff
       Margaret LeWars - Photographer
       Riccardo Billi - Greek Shipowner
       Bing Russell - Robert
       Martin Miller - Photographer
       Robert J. Wilke - Wallace
       Aldo Sambrell

• Director:

  Sergio Leone, Blake Edwards, Terence Young, John Sturges

• Producer:

  Arrigo Colombo, Giorgio Papi, Martin Jurow, Albert R. Broccoli, Harry Saltzman, Walter Mirisch, John Sturges

• Screenwriter:

  Sergio Leone, Duccio Tessari, Victor A. Catena, G. Schock, Blake Edwards, Maurice Richlin, Johanna Harwood, Richard Maibaum, Berkley Mather

• Book Author:

  Ian Fleming

• Screenwriter:

  Walter Bernstein, Walter Newman, William Roberts

• Cinematographer:

  Massimo Dallamano, Philip H. Lathrop, Ted Moore, Charles B. Lang

• Composer (Music Score):

  Ennio Morricone, Henry Mancini

• Songwriter:

  Johnny Mercer, Franco Misliacci

• Composer (Music Score):

  John Barry, Monty Norman

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Eric Rogers

• Composer (Music Score):

  Elmer Bernstein

• Editor:

  Roberto Cinquini, Marshall M. Borden, Ralph Winters, David Zinnemann, Peter Hunt, Ferris Webster

• Production Designer:

  Ken Adam

• Art Director:

  Fernando Carrere, Sidney Cain, Syd Cain, Edward FitzGerald

• Set Designer:

  Jack Stephens, Reg Allen, Arrigo Breschi

• Costume Designer:

  Carlo Simi, William Theiss

• Makeup:

  John O'Gorman, Dan Striepeke, Emile LaVigne

• Special Effects:

  Lee Zavitz, Frank George, Milt Rice

• Stunts:

  Gerry Crampton, Bob Simmons, Jack Williams

• Choreography:

  Hermes Pan

• Costume/Wardrobe:

  Yves Saint Laurent

• Musical Performer:

  Don Lusher

REVIEWS:

• One of the most popular Westerns of all time, John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven was based on Akira Kurosawa's 1954 epic The Seven Samurai (which was originally titled "The Magnificent Seven" and was itself a thematic descendant of the Westerns of John Ford). Director/producer Sturges packed a huge amount of plot and detail into what could have been a routine Western -- the opening threat to the Mexican village; the first meeting between Yul Brynner's Chris and Steve McQueen's Vin in a tense confrontation with a group of racist thugs trying to block a funeral procession; the decision to help the villagers and the gathering of the unlikely band of heroes; the heroes' journey to the village and their confrontation with who and what they, as gunmen, really represent to the people they're trying to help. Some of this kind of material had figured in other, earlier movies, including George Stevens' Shane, Anthony Mann's underrated The Tin Star, and Sturges' own Last Train From Gun Hill, but no one had ever put quite that much plot or character development into a single Western before. Apart from Yul Brynner, who was already an established star thanks to The King and I, the cast featured a half-dozen actors who were either on the edge of stardom, such as Eli Wallach and Steve McQueen, or who would become major stars in coming years, including James Coburn, Charles Bronson, and Robert Vaughn; indeed, Sturges would re-team with McQueen, Coburn, and Bronson for 1963's The Great Escape, a film that provided a huge boost to each man's career. The Magnificent Seven was a massive hit when it was first released and by 1966 had spawned the first of three sequels; but the cast, which grew in prominence as most of them became massive box-office attractions in their own right, only made the movie seem bigger and more important as time went on, so much so that, had it not gone to television in the early '60s, The Magnificent Seven would have been ripe for an even bigger theatrical run in, say, 1965 or 1966. As it was, a television series based on the film was finally spawned at the end of the 1990s. There were also enough parodies, as well as references to the movie in media touchstones like the 1980s sitcom Cheers -- The Magnificent Seven being the favorite movie of the bar's regular patrons -- to confirm its place in the cultural lexicon. None of the sequels or the television series, however, ever matched Sturges' original, either at the box office or in their impact on popular culture. The secret behind the original's vast success, apart from the once-in-a-lifetime cast and the dazzlingly memorable score by Elmer Bernstein, was its timing and underlying zeitgeist. The Magnificent Seven was one of the very last feel-good films about American adventurism abroad to come out of Hollywood. Appearing in the period immediately before Vietnam became a political worry and then a full-blown war, it was the last major movie to depict Americans (albeit gunmen and mercenaries) going to another country to help a people struggling for independence, without any of the complications that Vietnam added to that notion. The film was, thus, a two-tiered nostalgia experience -- initially, about the closing of the West and, in the next few years, in a much more powerful and potent way, as a fond look back at Americans' image of themselves as "good guys" in the modern world. The only flaw in the film that is apparent when looking at it today is the absence of a black member of the seven -- Sturges himself was an old-fashioned, two-fisted liberal, but it's debatable whether, even if the script had contained such a character, United Artists or any other studio, would have okayed that casting in 1959. Even three years later United tried to get Ralph Nelson to make Lillies of the Field with Steve McQueen in place of Sidney Poitier); not to mention the question of who would have played the part -- among the most visible black leading men of the period, Poitier was too young and James Edwards was the wrong type. In any case, the film is a perfect document of its time as it stands and has become identified as such an intensely American cultural document that many viewers are unaware of its origins as a samurai story. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
• One of the most successful franchises of the 1960s and 1970s, director Blake Edwards' Pink Panther movies were a hit from their first installment, in 1964. The film introduced many of the series' hallmarks: Peter Sellers' endearingly inept Inspector Clouseau; the lanky animated pink panther of the credit sequences; and Henry Mancini's instantly recognizable score. Clouseau is a more minor role here than he would be in the future. Sellers' scene-stealing work -- in a part originally intended for Peter Ustinov -- secured him starring status in the subsequent films. His sense of comic timing is unparalleled, in both dialogue delivery and physical humor. Though The Pink Panther isn't as funny as its sequel, A Shot in the Dark (also from 1964), Edwards gives the screwball humor an effortless feel. Such farce was a departure for Edwards, previously best-known for the bittersweet Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and the somber Days of Wine and Roses (1962). The Pink Panther would be followed by eight sequels of varying casts and quality and a popular television cartoon. ~ Brendon Hanley, Rovi
• Terence Young's Dr. No started one of the most lucrative franchises in movie history, as well as forever changed film audiences' expectations and the film industry's conceptions of both screen heroes and movie thrillers. Dr. No presented a hero who was as hedonistic and even venal (and that went double where women were concerned) as he was brave and resourceful; in no way selfless, Sean Connery's James Bond was the first hero conceived along lines that Playboy magazine could have applauded, always as mindful of his own pleasures as he was of the mission at hand -- Bond was the first modern screen hero motivated as much by the pursuit of those pleasures, and his personal lusts, as he was by any devotion to duty or a higher purpose (there had been a few antecedents in the distant past, mostly growing out of post-World War I adventure fiction, such as Bulldog Drummond and the Saint, but they hadn't made a huge impact on the screen). The seemingly blurred morality of Dr. No's hero also blurred the lines that movies and popular culture had relied upon for decades to differentiate the sides on which characters stood, so much so, that in their first face-to-face meeting, the film's title villain (Joseph Wiseman) mistakes Bond for a kindred spirit and a potential ally; indeed, Dr. No's first onscreen appearance is filled with as much teasing as Bond's first appearance before the camera -- their bodies and hands are seen before their faces, as though to establish a bizarre (for its time) parallelism between the two characters. Much of what was supposed to intrigue and dazzle viewers in 1962 may now seem tame, mostly thanks to the many Bond movies that followed, but Dr. No holds up as more than a period piece, mostly thanks to the mix of fresh, energetic portrayals by Connery, Wiseman, Ursula Andress, John Kitzmiller, and Jack Lord; a carefully crafted script with its feet in old- and new-style mysteries; and very lean, skillful work by Young and editor Peter Hunt. The sexual byplay also seems mild, until one realizes that Bond beds more women in this movie than any 50 screen heroes up to that time. In looking at the movie today, one can not only see the cinematic equivalent of a bolt of lightning hitting the action-adventure genre dead-center, but also a candid snapshot capturing several new phenomena in popular culture that were about to spring into the world, far beyond the realm of motion pictures. The location material in Dr. No was shot in Jamaica in early 1962, just as the island was in transition to independence, and its culture, music, and identity were all about to burst onto the international scene. The band playing "Jump Up" in the sequence at Puss Feller's club was Byron Lee & the Dragonaires, one of the top music acts in Kingston; at the time, in 1961-1962, Byron Lee was recorded by WIRL records, a label founded and run by Edward Seaga, who subsequently arranged for Lee and his band to appear at the 1964 New York World's Fair, where they took the city by storm, playing the hottest night spots in the city and becoming the first Jamaican band to get a U.S. record contract with a major label. In the later 1960s, Seaga, who had become Minister of Finance (and, later still, Prime Minister), sold his studio to Lee, who renamed it Dynamic Sounds Recording, and it was there that the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, and other luminaries cut a string of classic songs and albums during the 1970s. Additionally, in that same club scene in Dr. No, one can spot a tall man in a blue shirt dancing -- that was Chris Blackwell, who was a production assistant on the movie and soon after became the founder of Island Records, a company that was later sold for 300 million dollars and went on to play a vital role in the international spread of such Jamaican-spawned sounds as ska, bluebeat, rocksteady, and reggae, making stars of Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, and many others. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
• The hugely influential A Fistful of Dollars launched the careers of star Clint Eastwood, director Sergio Leone, and composer Ennio Morricone. Essentially a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, the film was one of the first low-budget, Italian-made "spaghetti westerns" to reap a significant amount of money and develop a cult following in the U.S. marketplace. Though John Ford's 1956 film The Searchers marked the of end the traditional western, Leone's "Man with No Name" trilogy ushered in a new, highly stylized version of the genre, revitalizing it in the late 1960s. Dollars and its companions, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, are raw portrayals of suffering and violence which blur the lines of good-versus-bad. Eastwood's cold, squinting, anti-hero is at the heart of the new amorality; it would be a role that would influence the rest of his career. For Leone, the trilogy would be a training ground for his masterpiece, the big-budgeted Once Upon a Time in the West. Morricone went on to become one of the most prolific, instantly recognizable composers in movie history. ~ Brendon Hanley, Rovi