Leonard Maltin's 151 Best Movies You've Never Seen - Maltin, Leonard [86]
Virtually every filmmaker I meet expresses admiration for American films of the early 1970s—with good reason—but Scarecrow is unjustly forgotten among the many gems of that period. It holds up beautifully today and is still awaiting rediscovery.
118. SEVEN MEN FROM NOW
(1956)
Directed by Budd Boetticher
Screenplay by Burt Kennedy
Actors:
RANDOLPH SCOTT
GAIL RUSSELL
LEE MARVIN
WALTER REED
JOHN LARCH
DONALD BARRY
STUART WHITMAN
How can a seemingly simple Western be as multilayered, resonant, and thoroughly satisfying as Seven Men From Now? Even if I had the answer, I suspect it wouldn’t take me very far if I were trying to make a film just like it today. Simplicity, like wit, is no longer valued in Hollywood.
The beauty of Seven Men From Now is that it accomplishes so much without fanfare. It seems like a fairly straightforward story about a loner (Randolph Scott) who is out to avenge the death of his wife. We meet him as he is tracking down the men responsible. Along the way he teams up with a good-hearted if ineffectual homesteader (Walter Reed) and his beautiful wife (Gail Russell), who are traveling by Conestoga wagon. He also encounters a mean-spirited gunman (Lee Marvin) who’s a natural-born tease with a gift of gab.
Anyone who accepts the stereotype of Randolph Scott as a square-jawed, one-dimensional hero clearly hasn’t seen this film, or the others that followed in a remarkable outpouring of creative energy by young screenwriter Burt Kennedy and director Budd Boetticher. Theirs was an inspired collaboration, to put it mildly: Buchanan Rides Alone, The Tall T, Comanche Station, and Ride Lonesome are all superior character-driven Westerns, made on modest budgets but yielding rich results.
The key word in describing Seven Men From Now is subtext. Scott and Russell form a bond, yet nothing is ever directly expressed of the longing they clearly feel for each other. As for the bad guy, he’s bad, all right, but Lee Marvin’s performance is outrageous. One doesn’t expect laugh-out-loud moments involving a character who is clearly a heartless villain. Kennedy and Boetticher were confident enough of their story, and their actors, to permit this colorful supporting actor (who was not yet a star) to walk away with virtually every scene he’s in. (It also says something about Randolph Scott that he wasn’t threatened by the younger actor.)
Boetticher and veteran cinematographer William Clothier also took the time to craft beautiful—and meaningful—compositions. There is a scene of Scott bunking down for the night underneath the wagon, with Russell just above him, that’s unforgettable.
Seven Men From Now sparkles with sharp writing, expert playing, and confident direction…and it manages to tell its story in just seventy-eight minutes!
The film was out of circulation for several decades, along with other films produced by John Wayne’s Batjac company. It was finally restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2000, and watching it that summer at UCLA, with Kennedy and Boetticher in attendance, was a memorable experience. The director accompanied it to film festival showings in New York and Europe, which must have been enormously satisfying. Within a year both he and Kennedy had gone to their final reward.
I was asked to introduce the film at that year’s Telluride Film Festival and happily complied. On my way to its second showing, I ran into French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder and said, “Didn’t I already see you at the screening yesterday?” He replied, “I’m going again; I have so much to learn from it!”
119. SHADOWBOXER
(2006)
Directed by Lee Daniels
Screenplay by William Lipz
Actors:
HELEN MIRREN
CUBA GOODING JR.
STEPHEN DORFF
VANESSA FERLITO
JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT
MO’NIQUE
MACY GRAY
Credibility is in the eye of the beholder. I can’t count