7 Women (1966)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Crappy film

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

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.

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.

"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.

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!