In his review for 7 Men from Now in Cahiers du Cinéma, Andre Bazin identified that like many of Budd Boetticher’s Westerns, this one has “no symbols, no philosophical backdrops, no psychological shading, nothing but ultra-conventional characters in totally familiar occupations.” For Bazin, the film’s sublimity comes from Boetticher’s refining of the Western tradition, creating something that attains a logical realism rather than psychological embellishment. This style of filmmaking has never been clearer than in Boetticher’s series of six films he made with Randolph Scott, also known as the Ranown Cycle. Each film lands around the 70-minute mark and features an notably stripped-down narrative: a man is out for revenge, or he is searching for his kidnapped wife. This simplicity, something which many contemporary Westerns lack, is what allows Boetticher to focus on the materialism of the film: capturing the rocky terrain of the desert with pure beauty, blocking the characters so that their movements feel as natural as the wind, and shooting action sequences that are precise and hit hard.
7 Men from Now is Boetticher’s first film in the cycle, and it opens on a dark and gloomy night, the sound of pouring rain hitting the dirt, a lonely figure wandering on foot. Immediately, an intensely somber tone is set, pervading the frame; the camera is still as Ben Stride (Scott) wanders across the blackened plain, eventually running into two men, hiding away at a campfire. These two men are a part of a gang that Stride blames for the death of his wife: she was killed in the armed robbery of a Wells Fargo, perpetrated by a gang of seven men who have mostly fled and remain in hiding at a small town in the near distance. For a few brief moments Stride engages in dialog with these men, subtly hiding the vengeful scorn he carries for them. There is no music, just the sound of rain surrounding the three men. As they drink coffee and discuss the murder of Stride’s wife, the tension escalates until a breaking point, resulting in the death of the two runaway criminals.
In these moments we are not able to see the brutality of these killings — one reason for this could be strict censorship in the ’50s, although Boetticher would go on to show bloodshed in later films. In the moment, the film cuts away as soon as the gun goes off, cutting to the horses waiting outside, with both the film’s viewers and the animals only hearing the shots, not seeing the outcome. Despite not showing to us the violence in motion, the events are assumed: Stride is an angel of death seeking revenge for the thing that has been so forcefully taken from him. This conquest for brutal justice follows Stride for the entire film, the loss of his wife haunting him like a specter, and enabling him to enact his own revenge. It’s through this that Randolph Scott truly shines as the structural archetype of the Western gunslinger: in every post-New Hollywood rugged man there is Scott’s stern face, all heavy eyes and stoic mug, as he calmly talks to the men he is about to kill.
These opening five minutes all but entirely dispel the concept of the “Revisionist” Western, a label used to delineate those of the classic period from the genre’s post-’60s iteration — which are often deemed more intellectual, politically charged, and endeavoring to undo the sins of classic Hollywood’s mythologizing American exceptionalism. Indeed, few concepts in cinema history have been as damaging to the understanding of filmic history than that of the Revisionist Western: subsuming into mainstream thought the falsity that classic Westerns have nothing intelligent to say about the political and moral landscape within which they are constructed. Boetticher’s harbinger of death here breaks the common idea that the classic Western is bound to a single ideology or moral doctrine that only allows for certain stories to be told. Stride is cold, his justice is swift, he takes no mercy. Fragments of his soul can be found in High Plains Drifter’s spectral killer or any of Sergio Leone’s nameless protagonists. Boetticher’s cinematic work, along with other directors such as Anthony Mann or Andre De Toth, are full of men driven by bloodlust and saddled with a hefty dose of moral ambiguity. In Boetticher and Scott’s Ranown Cycle, we witness this pre-’60s transition period where Westerns had already begun to dismiss the stereotypical “nobleman” who is so commonly associated with the Western.
Politics in Boetticher’s Westerns can often be subtle, apart from the wildly anarchist Decision at Sundown, and it only really appears in the cracks of dialogue between characters. In one moment an army general tells Stride that the Cherokee residing in the territory are dangerous. Stride refutes this notion, and instead asserts they are just hungry. The army general thinks they both agree — Stride too said they were dangerous — but Stride, and by extension Boetticher, has a contextual understanding of economic ruin and the violence it can engender. A similar reading can be applied to the guilt Stride bears: his refusal to take a job as a deputy out of shame led to his wife taking a job which ultimately led to her death. Money, or resources, are commonly motivations for murder or death in Boetticher’s Westerns, and the prioritization of financial stability almost always leads to violence.
Shortly after the opening scene, Stride meets the film’s most important character, Annie Greer. She and her husband John are stuck in a pool of mud. When John introduces his wife to Stride, for a moment time freezes and Stride pauses, a glimmer of his pain leaking out . But it is only brief, and he soon regains control of his emotions and continues his journey for bloodshed. It’s in this, how Stride, through Scott’s remarkably articulate performance, grapples with this grief and the possibility of a happy future, that we locate the film’s beating heart. Stride quickly turns into a protector of this couple, not allowing them to carry on despite John’s ignorance about the dangers surrounding them. It’s never spoken — unlike so many Westerns, where emotions are precisely conveyed through language — but Stride believes it is his duty to protect Annie — to make up for the guilt he feels for his wife’s death.
More faithful to the Western template, then, are the tender moments that punctuate the films masculine images: fleeting instances where deep feeling is bubbling away, inches from the surface. But Boetticher often maneuvers his character away from happiness. Instead of offering an outlet for emotional turmoil, he fades the image out as emotions simmer back down to a lulled ebb. One specifically painful moment comes when Stride rides off alone to confront the gang holed up in the town he’s swiftly approaching; Annie tries to stop him from going, claiming that he must have loved his dead wife very much. Eventually, the two begin to embrace, before realizing the impossibility of finding love in this very moment: Stride has a rendezvous with vengeance, and Annie is married to another man.
About Scott’s performance, Bazin said he never displayed “a facial gesture, never the shadow of a thought or a feeling,” and that his “face expresses nothing because there is nothing to express.” However, while Bazin is writing beautifully about Scott’s often vacant eyes and weary expressions and their frequent refusal to give a smile or even a grimace, his reluctance to define Scott’s performance as emotional seems wrong. Scott doesn’t exhibit his interiority through his facial expressions so much as he does his body language: we see how is body freezes or turns away when he feels pain and distress. This can also be felt through his tone of voice: his voice is at peace when talking to Annie but adopts an aggressive tenor when he feels it must, when dealing with the enemy — such as Lee Marvin’s excellent side-villain Bill Masters, who follows Stride in hopes of finding the robbed money. So while Scott’s performance remains free of psychodrama, his nuance in conveying emotion through motion is unmatched; when Scott endures a brief moment of stillness, it can feel like the entire world is stopping.
And despite being a Western that is subdued in violence and spectral ghosts, 7 Men from Now still bears Boetticher’s singular tendencies and concern for masculine pride. Annie falls in love with Stride for little reason other than his imposing physicality, stoic determination, and persisting dedication to his wife. Stride’s ability to enact his revenge as a lone wolf, without needing the help of others, is likewise a commonality throughout most of the Ranown Cycle. This quality stands out even more starkly next to Annie’s husband, who the film views as a coward and failure who is incapable of achieving anything on his own merits, including the status of a villain. But in the film’s final moments, as Stride rides away from Annie and all of the violence he has seen, we see a glimmer in both of their eyes, hope for a better future, a light shining through the film’s gruff exterior.
