SEVEN MEN FROM NOW. RESTAURIERTE FASSUNG

In the mid-1950s Boetticher and actor Randolph Scott teamed up for a series of finely etched, elegiac westerns which count among the greatest glories of American cinema of the time. The first of these, Seven Men from Now, was for years unavailable; happily, it has now been restored by the UCLA film and Television Archive. Scripted by Burt Kennedy, Seven Men from Now follows aging lawman Ben Stride as he burns a trail of murderous revenge across a hardscrabble landscape searching for his wife's murderers; along the way he picks up an Eastern couple as well as a smart-talking outlaw, Big Masters. A trained bullfighter, Boetticher imagined his films as a series of feints, dares, and passes, all leading to the final, inevitable showdown in the middle of the ring; here that approach is transformed into a haunting moral vision. (Kent Jones)