Magnificent7
Bruce Wang Citizen Wang Studio
Article By Bruce Wang @ citizenwangstudio.com
The Magnificent 7 was released in Hong Kong in 1960, the whole family went to see the show. I was about 7 years old and still remember the experience even though I haven’t seen the show again in the 60 years between then and now. At 7 years I wasn’t yet educated in the conventions of story telling and exposition. As soon as the title music came on I was enthralled and completely uplifted. I actually somehow began to think that this film was a documentary. I was heartbroken when the James Coburn character got killed and nearly wept as the Robert Vaughn character got hit. I don’t know why I added this blog, sad old me, recently I have been getting flashbacks to scenes from the Magnificent 7 especially when James Coburn’s character gets mortally wounded and he throws his final knife into a log and it sticks. And also when Charles Bronson is training the villager to shoot a rifle but gives up and tells him to use it like an axe. The triumph of good over evil, young love, heroic deaths , it’s all there. Why have I written an entire blog about this ? It’s just one of those formative sequences in my life like going to see West Side Story—but that’s another blog.