User reviews

I wonder what feminists feel about this film. I found this work to be a fascinating look at women by a male director that can compare with two other cinematic works: Paul Mazursky's "The Unmarried Woman" and Muzaffar Ali's "Umrao Jaan". Strong women, weak women, lesbians, and immature girls, are contrasted with cardboard male characters that are never fully developed and are obviously no match to the array of women portrayed in the film. The men are painted so negatively that one begins to wonder if Ford thought Asian men had more brawn than brain--a strange view that has gained currency in Hollywood cinema.

I applaud Ford's decision to cast Anne Bancroft in this role. This is one of her strong performances. She makes even the most vapid films look elegant with her roles ("Lipstick", "Little Nikita", to name just two). Ford develops her role "7 women" on the lines of a Western gunslinger--only there are no gunfights. The woman has a weapon: sex. That weapon can down all the bad guys faster than it takes to down Mexicans, Red Indians, rustlers, bank-robbers. In this film these bad men are Chinese/Mongolian thugs. Established thespians Dame Flora Robson and Margaret Leighton are totally eclipsed by Bancroft's riveting performance.

What Ford wanted I guess was to stun the viewer with the ending--the twist preceded by the gradual softening of the Bancroft in men's clothes to the Bancroft in women's clothes and the acceptance of male superiority. Most critics have found the end facile but I found the end was powerful as it makes you review and reconsider the strength of the lead character.

The film questions established views on religion; evidently Ford was old enough to have seen enough to choose to make this film in the evening of his life. In his films, Ford's women are as interesting as any other aspect of his cinema and this film provides ample fodder for those interested in studying this element of Ford's work.

However, for a 1966 film, the studio sets for the film look too artificial for the serious cinema the film offers. If anything, the film makes the viewer think!

A jewel of a film – with superb acting in the 2 principal roles! Should be shown much more often. Failings in the set and in the minor characters are more than made up for by the vital intelligence of the presentation. The film is about religion and sex, and nothing else – and it is that simplicity that makes it fascinating. Bancroft has the role of saint and Leighton is the sinner. Is the poor exposure of this excellent film anything to do with lobbying from the churches, I wonder - after all it must be somewhat embarrassing for them to have an atheist doubling as a saint and a devout catholic doubling as a religious maniac. The saint sacrifices herself for the majority, just as Jesus was sacrificed. The sinner showed the intolerance characteristic of all religious bodies. By the way, smoking and drinking had already been established for Hollywood characters long before 1966, male and female. It was pushed by lobbying and bribery from the tobacco and alcohol industries and Bogart was a prominent and pitiful victim. So I do not see the smoking and drinking of the Bancroft character as primarily male characteristics. As for the rather muted rudeness she displayed at times, this I see as a very natural reaction to the infernal hypocrisy of the Leighton character - a 'devout catholic' who does not even believe in God – "I am looking for something that does not exist" she says. What superb realism.

The end of the film is the only part I did not think satisfying or realistic – in view of the character of the doctor. She is obviously a fighter and a very courageous woman. Her final action was cowardly and not in her character at all. All that was necessary was a few more days of cajoling the chief into sufficient liberty to get a horse to match her riding breeches - there were plenty of horses around – then kill the bastard, with perhaps a few more thrown in, and make for the main gate pronto.

In conclusion, the film shows a riveting clash of values in a theater piece that hardly needs any set. And the atheist comes out a clear winner. Good for you John Ford!

"Seven Women" is the last feature film of John Ford, arguably the greatest director the United States has yet produced. After a half century of film making, Ford ended his fabled career with a wide screen feature about women in peril at a Chinese mission. Infirm and alcoholic, he filmed it on an MGM sound stage; MGM then cut it and tossed it away on the bottom half of a double bill.

Today, the film is little known and seldom seen. It is far from Ford's best work, yet there is power and believability in many of the lead performances, and power in the arc of the story. Anne Bancroft shines as a feisty New York doctor who ultimately sacrifices herself to save the other missionaries -- many whom she doesn't agree with -- from brutal deaths at the hands of Chinese bandits. Her work here is more forceful and better realized than her role of Mrs. Robinson, done two years later.

The best gift MGM/Sony could give lovers of serious cinema is a clean print of this forgotten film. Its sets are often glaringly artificial, and some of the secondary players are over the top (an old weakness of Ford's) as well as miscast, but "7W" is a far better film than Hollywood legend has told us.

7 Women (1966) Anne Bancroft fans, check out the forgotten drama 7 Women. She plays a tough, capable woman doctor sent to a missionary in China. This isn't important, but her short, curly hair is just adorable. What is important is the setting: a small village with limited resources and impending doom. Margaret Leighton heads up the missionary, and even though she's received word that a ruthless Mongolian bandit is headed their way, she refuses to flee to a safer location. She believes that the bandits will respect their Christianity and leave them unharmed, but when Anne arrives, she scoffs at the notion that religion will protect them.

Eddie Albert and his pregnant wife, Betty Field, need Anne's services the most. As an older woman, the pregnancy could have complications, but they also refuse to leave. Sue Lyon is an impressionable girl who first looks up to Margaret and then Anne. Flora Robson and Mildred Dunnock are also in the supporting cast. What can seven women and one useless man (sorry, Eddie) do when faced with such terrible danger? This very tense drama has a lot going for it, but strong women beware: it's upsetting. You won't see the twists and turns coming, and when they happen you'll probably be in shock for a while. But you will think Anne Bancroft is the bravest lady ever.

John Ford's swan song is very underrated. Anne Bancroft plays a chain-smoking doctor who has fled the United States (for reasons unknown, unless they were explained during the minute or so I was away to answer the phone) to work at a mission in China. Margaret Leighton plays the head of this mission, a devout Christian who controls her underlings with strict rules. Various troubles ensue, the most prominent being the threat of a cholera epidemic, a raid by Mongolian bandits, and a pregnant woman who is nearing menopause, which makes the birth a very difficult situation. It is the second problem which I mention that takes up most of the plot. The mission has heard stories of these Mongolians in the nearby areas. Leighton is sure that they will never dare attack her mission, by the grace of God and America. But they do, and they keep all the white women hostage after killing off every Chinese person in sight. They believe that they can win a ransom for them. The tough Bancroft bravely opposes them, but she can make no headway by those means. Instead, the leader of the bandits demands sex. In this way, she is able to influence the way the women are treated (especially concerning the birth). The main conflict of the film is between Leighton and Bancroft. It's very 60s, with the progressive, liberated woman fighting against the strict, sexless one. The role of religion is very interesting in the film. It's shocking that Ford, a devout Catholic, would make the headmistress so foolish. It's a very intelligent criticism of the holier-than-thou attitude of some. When death looks imminent, Leighton seems almost excited to become a martyr; and she's willing and ready to take everyone else with her. When Bancroft sees her chance to save the others, Leighton viciously attacks her for being the "whore of Babylon." The final scene is quite excellent. What a great way for the greatest director of all time end his career.

It's 1935 in northern China near the Mongolian border. Agatha Andrews leads a mission where Dr. D.R. Cartwright (Anne Bancroft) arrives. Charles Pether (Eddie Albert) and Emma Clark (Sue Lyon) are two of the teachers. Refugees arrive from another mission after an attack by ruthless Mongolian warlord Tunga Khan.

It's legendary western director John Ford's final film. It would be nice to have more exterior shots of the landscape. The religious righteousness of Agatha Andrews could be more prominent earlier in the movie. It's also maybe more interesting to have the movie start with the doctor journey to the mission. I just want more foreshadowing of what happens between them later in the movie. Otherwise, this is an intriguing eastern. Tunga's brutality is believable. Sure it would be nice if a non-white guy could play the role but that's expecting too much for a film of this era.

For a film nut like me. 7 Women offers a plethora of pleasures. Patricia Neal was suppose to star but ill health made her unavailable. Anne Bancroft took over as the drinking, smoking, swearing saint. and all the aspects of this complex character are totally real in Anne Bancroft's face. She arrives to the Mission in China like a benevolent tornado. The spectacular Margaret Leighton is the head of the Mission and she plays it like a raw nerve, Among the other women, Flora Robson, Queen Elizabeth to Laurence Olivier's Michael Ingolby in Fire Over England, brings a voice of reason that reassure us, Betty Field , Kim Novak's mother in Picnic, among a gallery of memorable characters, plays the pregnant middle age woman who offends the Christian mission for having had sex with her husband under their roof. Mildred Dunnock, Anna Lee and even Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, Sue Lyon is part of the Mission. On the other side, the villains, that offended so many people, John Ford casts his longtime companion Woody Strode. I understand and even accept all the criticisms listed in the reviews of this pages but, somehow, I can put all that aside and enjoy the plethora of pleasures that it offers.

John Ford ended his narrative feature filmmaking career with something different, a story about women instead of men. It's a bit of a mixed bag of a film, showing a lot of the errant storytelling that had become more prevalent of Ford's film in his final decade, but a surprisingly stark ending helps elevate the material in a way that I had not been expecting. Reminding me of how Hitchcock went out with Family Plot, a smaller, lesser film that still managed to entertain while also demonstrating the strengths the filmmaker had developed over the decades.

In a remote mission in rural China, a group of women and one man teach the local children English and in the ways of Christ. One of them, Florrie (Betty Field), is pregnant, nearly due, and having been brought to the mission by her husband Charles (Eddie Albert). The head of the mission, Agatha (Margaret Leighton), has seen the need for a doctor, so she has arranged for the arrival of Dr. D. R. Cartwright (Anne Bancroft), who happens to be a woman, a twist Agatha had not foreseen. What seems like the undergirding conflict of the film will be between the deliriously religious Agatha against the sardonically secular Dr. Cartwright. It never really comes to fruition, though. It's set up so that Agatha and Dr. Cartwright will be duking it out rhetorically and morally for the soul of young Emma (Sue Lyon), the youngest of the missionaries.

What happens instead is a sudden outbreak of cholera after the battle lines of personality have been drawn. With the encroaching march of the Mongolian warlord Tunga Khan (Mike Mazurki), another British mission has abandoned their location and fled to the mission led by Agatha. With them came cholera, and Dr. Cartwright takes charge. She's assertive and action oriented, getting the mission moving in a way that can deal with the outbreak with minimal loss of life, and then it's suddenly over. We go from one scene where the outbreak is on the verge of being taken care of to a celebratory dinner (that Agatha insists on making dour while Cartwright insists on breaking open a bottle of scotch to celebrate) in a cut. I thought it was going to be a running plot element through the rest of the movie, and then it was suddenly over. Okay. Moving on.

That's the first half of the movie, and it's far from great. As a story unto itself, it's oddly built and unsatisfying. As the first half of what comes next, it's still curious but the basic story elements of Cartwright's character, the pregnancy, and the setting have been established well enough to go into what seems to become the point of the film. Tunga Khan arrives with his horde and takes up residence in the mission, Charles having been killed in the village when he tried to help a young girl being raped. He shoves the women into a wooden shed, and Cartwright needs to take charge as much as she can, especially when Florrie goes into labor. Cartwright becomes the face of the women when negotiating with Tunga Khan, offering up her own body as ransom for her medical supplies, hot water, and food.

It would have been better had Cartwright's character been a greater focus of the first half, though. There's little about why she came to rural China for a job. She talks about how women doctors aren't given opportunities to work and that she was also running from a failed relationship with a married man, but that's about it. I don't think enough is given to her early to make these early decisions terribly impactful. It's a strong moment from Bancroft, carrying the weight of her decision well, but I just think it could have been better set up.

This moves us into the film's finale where Cartwright essentially becomes Tunga Khan's prize, his queen. A good thing about this later section of the film is Khan himself. There's no good side to Khan. He's a barbarian and a monster, unrepentant about his crimes and even kills one of his own men (Woody Strode) in one-on-one combat just because. There's no negotiating with this man, no appealing to his humanity. His interest in human life is only what can profit him. So, Cartwright does what she can to provide the freedom of the other women, the titular seven. She gives herself fully to him.

Now, up to this point, I was kind of seesawing back and forth about the movie's worth as a whole, but then the final scene happened. I loved it. It was an ending both dark and hopeful at the same time. It goes to a place with Cartwright that feels just right after what she had gone through and seen in the second half. I think it saves the movie.

I've felt a certain fatigue in Ford's work as his career came to an end, but despite that exhaustion he still manages a solid little tale with his final narrative feature film. It may take until the final moments to push it to that level, but it does get there in the end.

I don't understand all the gushing in these reviews of "Seven Women," much of which seems to be spillover from a general worship of John Ford's other movies, but some reviewers actually seem to be impressed. I, on the other hand, was not impressed in the least. It was pretty much a waste of time. The plot line was pedestrian, much of it predictable from the outset, the conflicts between characters stark and artificial, as if written by an amateur, the dialogue stagey and unnatural. Again and again a short scene developed only so that a single line could be delivered, and that line was always burdened with carrying some overdone bit of poignancy or deep significance. The final scene was total, schlocky melodrama that brought to my mind some bad old silent movie, just one small cut above The Perils of Pauline. Don't get your hopes up if you're reading these reviews before watching.

I am still reeling from the powerful ending to this unspoken of movie. John Ford's last entry onto his glittering resumé stuns while it holds your interest at every turn of a scene.

It is so hard to resist talking about the ending of this movie. It seethes with so much devastating darkness. And yet, within this darkness, there is a human victory so profoundly complex as to take your breath away in resignation, anger, shock and inevitable acceptance.

Anne Bancroft has always been one of my favorite actresses. With all her celebrated roles, I still feel that the depth of talent has never been fully appreciated.

Yet, in this role, she displays her talents aplenty.

I recommend this seldomly seen movie and I hope it will be brought to VHS or DVD one day so that more will see this movie and its production will not be in vain.

Poorly received and unceremoniously dumped by MGM this cinematic swansong from John Ford is unique in his output as it is devoid of the sentimentality that can mar even his best films and at the same time passing the Bechdel Test with flying colours.

Anne Bancroft, a last minute replacement for the tragically indisposed Patricia Neal and who was unfairly described by Ford as 'the mistress of monotone', is magnificent as a free-thinking, outspoken, atheistic doctor whilst Margaret Leighton excels in the difficult role of a deeply religious woman who veers between repressed Sapphic desire and sanctimonious disgust.

The 'rooster in the henhouse' is played by Eddie Albert and any actor who has to utter the line "How could I get my wife pregnant at a time like this?" deserves our deepest sympathy.

Ford regular Woody Strode is once again a strong presence whilst Mike Mazurki as a Mongolian bandit chief is alas a cartoon character.

Ford has come full circle here as his editor is Otho Lovering who had worked with him on 'Stagecoach'.

It as been said that Ford's career comprises mountain peaks and desert valleys and whether this opus qualifies as either a high or a low is of course down to the individual viewer. There are certainly worse films to go out on and the wonderful last line is one that Ford himself must surely have relished: "So long, ya *******!"

On the border of Mongolia in 1935, American missionaries suffer through starvation, cholera, a menopausal woman about to give birth, an attack by vicious bandits and the arrival of a chain-smoking, salty-tongued female doctor/atheist (Anne Bancroft) who usurps the power of the self-appointed leader (Margaret Leighton, whose nervous fascination with the minister's daughter, comely Sue Lyon, is vaguely lesbian in nature). Director John Ford's final film is brief and inexpensive, seemingly shot all on one sound-stage with few trimmings (when Lyon is told to take the children "into the fields," one wonders where exactly those fields are). So many different styles of acting are brought to the fore that it appears nobody knew how to approach this material. For his part, Ford may have been relishing the clashes (character and otherwise); his pacing tends to pick up whenever the conflicts threaten to get really nasty. I liked Anne Bancroft's straightforward, no-nonsense personality, Lyon is charmingly self-conscious, while Leighton is heinously hissable playing a completely unsympathetic "dictator" with high-flown manners (amusingly, she's never given a chance to redeem herself--and on at least two occasions is told to shut up--so that we nearly sympathize with her, but the screenwriter has her rigid and vile right up until the end). The climax is solid and satisfying, but filmed with a wink by Ford, as if to say "It's all b.s. anyway." ** from ****

7 Women (1966)

*** (out of 4)

John Ford's final film is one you really wouldn't expect to see from him but I guess it goes to show what a great director he was as he could end his nearly fifty-year career with something fresh and original. The film takes place in 1935 China as a free-wheeling and free-spirited doctor (Anne Bancroft) comes to work at a missionary where she immediately clashes with the head of the mission (Margaret Leighton). The head doesn't agree with the doctor's way of life, which includes smoking, drinking, profane language and of course not believing in God. Soon the doctor is battling this but then a plague breaks out in the mission and then they come under attack from some rebels. I'm not sure if stunned is too strong of a word but that's what my feelings were going through this film. I've seen at least fifty John Ford movies and I never thought I'd see something like this one. The attitude of the Bancroft character just seems like something the director would stay away from and the anti-religion stance was so strong that again I couldn't believe this was something from Ford. I think if you showed this movie to the biggest of film buffs and didn't tell them who the director was I doubt they'd ever guess it was someone like Ford. I really appreciated the 60s fling thrown into the picture because you can obviously tell that they were taking a 60s woman and putting her into this situation. There's a bit about the doctor leaving America because a woman couldn't get a fair shake at a good career and again I wonder if they were standing up for women's rights. The film also has bits of lesbianism, the religious hypocrites and a strong sense of sexuality. The movie certainly isn't ahead of its time considering this was 1966 but it's still impressive stuff. Bancroft is downright marvelous here and turns in a very memorable performance. I must admit that I fell in love with her character as you have to respect the toughness that the actress brings to the role. I believed every second of it and there's just a certain fire to Bancroft that clearly shows up on the screen. Leighton is one of those love-to-hate performances and makes for a great villain. Sue Lyon, best known from Kubrick's LOLITA, turns in a fine performance. We even get Woody Strode in a small role as one of the warriors. The film's pacing is a very slow one and it feels like the movie is a lot longer than its 86-minute running time but this isn't a negative thing as I never got bored. I was certainly surprised to see how much Ford managed to cram into the short running time. His direction here contains some of his softest touches but they all work. It's a shame this movie isn't mentioned more when people discuss his career but it's certainly a good and original way for him to go out.

Overacting. that's the word that comes to mind in the first ten minutes. Anne Bancroft is Doctor Cartwright. the mission in china was expecting a male doctor, but will have to make do when she shows up. Sue Lyon is Emma; Lyon was Lolita AND then Charlotte in Night of the Iguana. and of course, the sexy Diana in Sinatra's Tony Rome. She had the rocking body, and made a career out of showing it off. Mrs. Pether is pregnant, and always complaining about her husband Charles (Eddie Albert, in one of his weaker roles.) Directed by John Ford... this is pretty much a remake of Inn of the Sixth Happiness with Ingrid Bergman, made a couple years before. Ladies trying to maintain a mission in the rough areas of china. The story is pretty good. period piece about setting up a mission that could soon be over-run by the local gang-lords in that area.

Set in civil war torn China in 1935, the film boasts several great actresses in it.

Will someone please tell me how Sue Lyon was cast in the picture. She didn't look the type to get into mission work. We have the dependable Mildred Dunnock, as stern as ever but a heart geared toward understanding, unlike the head of the mission, Margaret Leighton, in a fabulous performance, as a strict-Christian adherent, who falls apart when the mission is over-run by savages.

Anne Bancroft notches another excellent portrayal as a unhappy doctor, common, vulgar, with a no nonsense approach to life. To think, Mrs. Robinson was only a year away!

Eddie Albert is basically wasted as a preacher-like minister who is killed off early. Bette Field, who played his pregnant wife, is just too old to be pregnant, even by today's standards. Nonetheless, Field brings plenty of tension, in a fine supporting performance.

The ending is unsatisfying here as Dunnock finally breaks with the over-bearing Leighton, as they and several others flee the warlords.

This is quite a curious swan-song for John Ford. An almost all-woman cast led by Anne Bancroft and Margaret Leighton are stranded in a remote missionary. When the local army battalion abandon their posts, a gang of marauding warriors take over their home and at some considerable risk to themselves, they must try and survive the encounter - and a cholera outbreak too. To be honest, not a lot goes on and the character depicted by Bancroft - a confident, self-reliant doctor, is oddly out of place for the scenario; especially when placed with the rather timid, puritanical, Leighton and a really under-used Flora Robson as "Miss Binns", and the ending is all just a bit too sudden.

John Ford the director of many classes went to MGM to film his last movie titled "7 Women".

This film was shot on the fabled old Culver City lot before most of it was sold off! Much praise must go for the set design of China that spread over several soundstage at MGM.

Jennifer Jones a great actress but high strong was initially listed as for this film. John Ford had a very sarcastic personality and all what one has to read Maureen O'Hara's book to learn of the many slights and insults John Ford gave O'Hara who was thought to be his favorite leading lady.!) Jennifer Jones r dropped out and was replaced by Patricia Neal who had a stroke and was replaced by Anne Bancroft. (both Katherine Hepburn and Roz Russell were said to be in line to star in this 7 Women

John Ford spent a career with great Male stars in Westerns but closed out his film career with a film set in Asia about Women

3 Observations on this 1966 drama directed by John Ford. First, Janet Green and John McCormick's screenplay based on "Chinese Finale" by Norah Lofts plays out as an allegory described in terms of characters, figures, and events converging because of Divine Providence. Second, the noble performances mostly explain or teach a Biblical principle: that faith in Christ is required to lay down one's life for others. Third, that absolute Biblical truth escapes Dr. Cartwright (Anne Bancroft) the New Yorker who smokes, drinks alcohol and disdains religion; and, fails to be articulated through the strict Miss Andrews (Margaret Leighton) the Head of the Mission whose central pivotal character regrettably turns into a stereotype in the latter third of the movie when she could have been written as the voice of grace and mercy for the viewing audience.

By 1966, a white giant like Mike Mazurki should not be playing an Asian. That goes double for black giant like Woody Strode.

Eddie Albert's acting is so campy and melodramatic that it looks like he's trying to spoof bad acting for an acting class lesson.

Otherwise, the dialogue is not well-connected to the realities the film depicts.

Studio soundstages are overly used here, especially for a John Ford project.

John Ford, usually with the reputation of misogynist, directed his last film surrounded by strong female characters and where the male characters are not particularly relevant. The movie is set in China, 1935, where a Civil War is taking place. Anne Bancroft, a female doctor who is also an atheist, says: "I spent years in slum hospitals. I never saw God come down and take care of anyone". Ford, with his catholic roots, allows himself to be pessimistic. Even when Margaret Leighton, a supposed strong believer is confronted by the female doctor, she says: "I've always searched for something that... isn't there. And God is not enough. God help me - He isn't enough".

The title refers to seven women, but the fact is that there are eight: What led us to believe that Anne Bancroft is excluded from the beginning? She wears man's clothes, she smokes and drinks. The loner Bancroft, condemned to always walk alone, like Ethan Edwards in "The Searchers". And what about the final scene, with a rare beauty, where the viewer isn't allowed to watch her fall? She is dressed in woman's clothes for the first time and is prepared to a truly catholic gesture, the sacrifice. "Seven Women" is a beautiful film, almost perfect. Towards the end, we become aware that Mr. Ford will live eternally.

Seven women was John Fords last- and one of his very best color movies. Strange and beautiful - about the fate of a group of women - during the boxer rebellion in China hundred years ago. It was a kind of a swansong (1966) for him - and he was very happy (and proud) about it - but its characters might be to strange and challenging for many movie lookers?? It is at least very underrated! I hope it will change in the future, so we can buy it on DVD. The acting and all situations in the movie are appealing and absolutely astonishing!!

Quotes from the review in New York Times May 5, 1966:

"Imagine a bunch of isolated, pristine mission ladies captured by bloodthirsty Mongolian bandits—this, mind you, under the great director, John Ford. Add a heady, female bevy of players like Margaret Leighton, Flora Robson, Mildred Dunnock, Betty Field and, emphatically, Anne Bancroft in the role begun by the stricken Patricia Neal...

Mr. Ford's picture, which gets off to a graphic, arresting start (with some ripe Elmer Bernstein music) tapers off to a stark, bony melodrama of female hysteria and mayhem...

And Mr. Ford has gotten professional performances, in the main, from his tense, but transparent study of violence besetting an American mission in 1935. But the story edges to a grim, foregone conclusion, underscored by nagging, neurotic yowling, led by Miss Leighton and Miss Field...

What steadies the film and almost severs it, in fact, is a sizzling, earthy performance by Miss Bancroft, as a profane hard-bitten doctor whose arrival tilts the mission even before the barbarians roar into view. Miss Bancroft, a little mannered heretofore, is simply wonderful, from her first bleak appraisal of the premises to the obvious, tragic fadeout, by which time the mission seems like an Oriental East Lynne..."