Object #26 - Lee's gloves - The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Dir. John Sturges

This one is pretty simple. Costume can go a long way to give us information about a character. A lot of the Mad Max films rely on outlandish outfits to show directly how insane and violent the post-apocalyptic inhabitants of Australia are. It can also distinguish characters who look similar from one another, think Christopher Johnson in District 9. And, of course, superheroes such as Batman and Thor are defined by their costumes. 

In The Magnificent Seven it's a subtle thing. Robert Vaughn's cowboy Lee, from the get-go, seems weaker than the other six members of the 'Magnificent Seven'. Yul Brynner's Chris leads, Steve McQueen is the right-hand man with all the one-liners, James Coburn's Britt comes off as a deadly knife-wielder, etc etc, with Brad Dexter being the boring 'tough-guy' who dies first (Spoiler alert for a 55 year old film!). Vaughn's character is just sort of...there. He doesn't have any defining characteristics until the latter half of the film. In fact, all we really know about him is that in an initial shoot-out he stands ready (pictured above), with hand-raised, deep in thought. He never fires a shot. 

In a Western such as this, characters are mostly defined by their wit, deadliness, and flair. Lee has none of this. He doesn't fight, has no witty one-liners, and seems pretty 'square'. How is this conveyed? Through his actions, or rather, lack of action, of course, but even more simply, by his gloves. 

Look at the picture above, Lee is the only one of the seven wearing gloves. It marks him as different, an outlier. We learn later in the film, in his prime character moment, that he has nightmares about previous battles he's fought in. He awakes, moaning, screaming, and upset. He is consoled by the inhabitants of the village, but it's clear he's been suffering with this trauma for a while. In modern terms, it's PTSD, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Before we learn this, we know there's something off about him, because of his gloves. Simple, but effective.

In his moment of 'victory', Lee prepares to storm a house full of enemy cowboys holding villagers prisoner. He pulls his gun, stands to the side, yet puts it away again. As an audience, we feel that he's 'weak', although in truth, there is nothing weak about a PTSD sufferer. Nonetheless, we feel it, as this is the sort of film where you must fight, or die. Lee stands in front of the door, enters, a pause, the enemy sees him, but he draws quick, dispatching three of them in one sweep. The prisoners free, they all return to the battle. 

He overcomes his trauma to save the prisoners, and dispatch his enemies. He is 'redeemed' in our eyes. Unfortunately, like most of the Seven, they are dispatched quickly, achieving overall victory but not without casualties. Lee, a veteran of the violent way of life in the West, dies as he should, in battle.

I don't condemn this, I actually think it's very mature of a film of the time to put a PTSD suffering character into a bog-standard Western, particularly considering that PTSD wasn't studied in-depth yet. I think the film as whole would be worse without it, as it adds complexity, and moral ambiguity to the way of the cowboy, in a way other westerns of the time ignored.

P.S Of course, most of this comes from the, in my opinion at least, superior Kurosawa film Seven Samurai that the film is an adaption of. I've written about it previously here. Running far shorter, The Magnificent Seven takes a lot of the beats of the original and condenses them considerably, such as Chico's (Horst Buchholz) backstory, his romance with Petra (Rosenda Monteras), and various other aspects, not least of which the ending, which is far superior in Seven Samurai as the cinematography, time spent with the characters, and history/mythos of the Samurai combine to create a far more powerful message than is adapted in The Magnificent Seven. I'll give The Magnificent Seven it's due though, as it has the subtlety of Lee's character, expressed brilliantly in simple visuals, with the use of a pair of gloves.