Classic Movie Review: The Magnificent Seven

There are great parallels between the 19^th century American West with its lawlessness, gunslingers, and vigilante justice and feudal Japan and its share of samurai warriors. Codes of honor are similar as are the general sense of open and unconquered land, small villages vulnerable to the strength of an oppressor, simple farmers trying to scrape by. The Japanese samurai films of the fifties borrowed and lifted tropes from the American western genre. Then a funny thing happened and the westerns started mimicking the samurai films. Seven Samurai was and still is one of the greatest of its kind. It was popular (as much as foreign films could be popular at the time) in the U.S. and it was ripe for picking by a Hollywood studio. And so the 1960 semi-classic The Magnificent Seven came to fruition.

Classic Movie Review: The Great Escape

It’s hard for me to get behind a movie that paints Nazis as benevolent and forgiving. John Sturges’ classic war film The Great Escape would have us believe that the real evils in the European front of WWII were the exclusive purview of the Gestapo. The Luftwaffe, on the other hand, are depicted as kindly, obedient and good-natured soldiers and officers just doing their jobs. So when British officers attempt escape from a prison camp, the response of the Kommandant is generally along the lines of, “Aw shucks, you guys. Are you at it again? Solitary confinement for you.” But the Gestapo officers are established right away as torturers, the subjects of the wary eyes of the Luftwaffe officers, who know they’re also being watched.