Now back in a dazzling remaster, John Ford’s final feature is a ‘problematic masterpiece.’ The director reaches back to the expressionist 1930s for a grim tale of a Christian mission outpost overrun by savage bandits. His cranky traditionalism in this case sides 100% with core feminist values, thanks to Anne Bancroft’s sterling performance as an outspoken, unapologetic doctor banished to a Chinese backwater. The daring, uncompromising result may not please religious zealots or minority advocates. It’s a must-see, both for the Ford faithful and for fans of Bancroft. At present, there’s an appeal for a restoration of the film’s longer version.

7 Women
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 87 min. / Street Date August 26, 2025 / Available at MovieZyng / 24.99
Starring: Anne Bancroft, Margaret Leighton, Sue Lyon, Mildred Dunnock, Eddie Albert, Flora Robson, Betty Field, Anna Lee, Mike Mazurki, Woody Strode, Jane Chang, Hans William Lee, H.W. Gim, Irene Tsu.
Cinematography: Joseph LaShelle
Art Directors: George W. Davis, Eddie Imazu
Costumes: Walter Plunkett
Film Editor: Otho Lovering
Music Composer: Elmer Bernstein
Screenplay by Janet Green, John McCormick based on the short story Chinese Finale by Norah Lofts
Produced by John Ford, Bernard Smith
Directed by John Ford

Whoa, John Ford’s 7 Women is a big topic to put forward. Those viewers that value the film remember it from books on director Ford, and the not-too-attractive print that has shown on TCM for decades — likely the same flat-letterboxed encoding used for an old laserdisc. It’s one of those titles we would repeatedly DVR, just to see if it would magically improve in quality.

Thanks to The Warner Archive Collection, that improvement has finally arrived.

Ford’s final film is at present the focus of online discussion. A restoration is needed to reinstate six minutes of deletions made just before its 1965 release, that actually did survive on a few prints. We’ll get into that below, with a link to a new article by R. Emmet Sweeney.

In 1965 John Ford had already endured almost 20 years of health problems; when he was fit he’d help direct movies like The Alamo, but he had to withdraw partly or entirely from at least two pictures of his own. Ford co-produced 7 Women with Bernard Smith, with whom he had made the big-format Road Show pictures  How the West Was Won and  Cheyenne Autumn. The chosen story this time around didn’t get the 70mm treatment.

Although it played well in Europe 7 Women did almost no business here, after being poorly reviewed as an overheated ‘women’s picture,’ an anachronism.  We didn’t see it until Nick Peterson and Janey Place made it the finale of a John Ford series at UCLA’s Melnitz Hall, in 1975 or ’76.  7 Women was a big hit with the grad students, as we’d just seen a score of Ford pictures with moderately conservative messages. There had been walk-outs at  The Wings of Eagles, but Ford’s politics were hard to nail down. He had a rebel spirit for anything remotely Irish, and his Cheyenne Autumn was a 3-hour rant against racist injustice.  The Searchers was of course ambivalent through and through. A big surprise was  Donovan’s Reef. Instead of tame kitsch, we saw it as a personal work of art, funneling strong emotional values through an absurd fantasy.

But 7 Women is dead serious. Dark and claustrophobic, it is highly reminiscent of Ford’s more expressionistic dramas from the 1930s:  The Lost Patrol,  The Informer,  The Prisoner of Shark Island. It takes place at a Protestant mission in China, in the very unstable 1930s. Unlike a previous  hit movie starring Ingrid Bergman, 7 Women has is no spiritual uplift and no romance with a dashing Chinese officer. Unlike Leo McCarey’s  Satan Never Sleeps, it pushes no particular Cold War message.

It doesn’t pay to make assumptions about John Ford’s politics. He and Bernard Smith entrusted the screenplay adaptation to the talented writers Janet Green and John McCormick, of Basil Dearden’s taboo-busting exposé dramas  Victim, about the double-jeopardy faced by England’s gays, and  Life for Ruth, in which parents refuse life-saving medicine for their daughter on religious grounds. Writing with Lukas Heller, Ms. Green had also won acclaim for  Sapphire, an unusually insightful murder mystery involving race prejudice. No conservative reactionary would have hired that particular writing team.

In a remote corner of China, American mission headmistress Agatha Andrews (Margaret Leighton of  Under Capricorn) refuses to take precautions when told that the Mongol bandit Tunga Khan (Mike Mazurki of  Murder, My Sweet) may overrun the district. Andrews is concerned mostly with lording it over her little chapel and school. She intimidates her teacher Pether (Eddie Albert of  Attack), a sad case who really wants to be a preacher. The only white male in the compound, Pether is bullied by his pregnant wife Florrie (Betty Field of  Kings Row and  The Great Gatsby). Florrie is a nervous wreck, fearful that she will deliver her baby without benefit of a doctor. Mission assistant Jane Argent (Mildred Dunnock) mostly parrots what Andrews says. Miss Ling (Jane Chang) helps communicate with the locals.

It soon becomes obvious that the imperious Agatha Andrews is a bundle of psychological issues. Agatha has trouble accepting that Pether and Florrie actually had sex in her compound. Only now, with their baby due, is Pether doubting that ‘God will provide’ for the 40-something Florrie — and Andrews won’t spend church funds on a private ‘confinement’ problem.

Even more disturbing is the fact that Agatha secretly lusts after the mission’s young teacher Emma Clark (Sue Lyon), who is bright enough to intuit that something is amiss. As Agatha suffers, she channels her guilt into browbeating Jane and humiliating the ineffectual, incompetent Pether.

When the promised doctor does arrive, it’s a woman, the wholly unconventional Dr. Cartwright (Anne Bancroft). Agatha doesn’t know what to think: the new doc wears pants. She smokes, drinks, and openly speaks her mind, using words like Hell and Damn at the dinner table. When the doctor produces a bottle of whiskey, Andrews shrinks from it the way Dracula trembles at the sight of a crucifix. Cartwright won’t bow to petty authority, and laughs at Agatha’s protests. But she is also competent and dedicated. She takes one look at Florrie’s advanced pregnancy and advises Pether to get her the hell out of there.

The promised threat becomes real when Tunga Khan burns a British mission in the nearest town. The Catholic survivors arrive, led by the strong-willed Miss Binns (Flora Robson). Agatha gives them sanctuary but offers little warmth for ‘Christians of a different denomination.’ The traumatized refugee Mrs. Russell (Anna Lee) becomes hysterical when recounting the atrocities committed by Tunga Khan’s men. To deal with a cholera outbreak, Dr. Cartwright takes charge of the mission staff, ignoring Miss Andrews’ protests.

Then the local Chinese army evacuates, and the situation becomes desperate. Pether takes Agatha’s car to find out what’s going on. Tunga Khan’s brigands break in, brutalize the whites and execute most of the Chinese. Agatha Andrews proves unable to function, but condemns Cartwright for negotiating with their captor for food and medicine. The brutish, infantile bandit wants Cartwright in his bed, a fact that the doctor uses to barter concessions. He agrees to wait until Florrie’s baby is delivered, but Cartwright knows she’ll have few choices after that.

7 Women can boast a top-rank, seldom-seen Anne Bancroft role. She had left Hollywood for Broadway several years earlier, citing a lack of worthwhile opportunities; on her return to film she  won the Oscar. At that time the honors of the Motion Picture Academy could be a big career boost, and Bancroft enjoyed a string of superb film performances. John Ford must have approved of Bancroft’s sassy, wicked sense of humor, which really bloomed with her  Mrs. Robinson two years later. She carries 7 Women with strength and personality to spare.

Ms. Bancroft is so perfect for the part that we were surprised to learn she was an emergency replacement: Ford had just begun filming when actress Patricia Neal suffered a near-fatal stroke. The great Ms. Neal made a fine comeback three years later, in Ulu Grosbard’s  The Subject Was Roses.

Ford-ologist critics align Anne Bancroft’s Dr. Cartwright with John Ford’s hard-drinking male frontier doctors, like  Thomas Mitchell and  Edmond O’Brien — principled alcoholics that will give anything for their patients. But Cartwright is something new, a first-rank Feminist bucking The System. Dr. Cartwright implies that she couldn’t get a decent job in the States, and has fled a relationship ‘with the wrong man.’  But she refuses to be broken, as is established in an early dialogue exchange:

Florrie:        “Are you the doctor? But you’re a woman!”
Cartwright:   “Unless a lot of men have been kidding me.”
Florrie:        “Charles, it’s a woman!”
Pether:        “Don’t worry. She’ll be as good as any man.”
Cartwright:   “BETTER!”

Back at the big UCLA screening, a whoop went up at Bancroft’s every tough pronouncement and insolent remark. Many of Ford’s women characters seem born to be stoic and accept their lot, but there are precedents for Dr. Cartwright’s stand-your-ground posture. Maureen O’Hara’s  Mary Kate Danaher is certainly no shrinking violent. Although it isn’t a leading role, we see a similar smiling, assertive swagger in Betsy Palmer’s  Lieutenant Girard in Ford’s Mister Roberts. Was Ford influenced by WAVE officers he had met in the Navy?  Cartwright and Girard share the same aura of self-confident professionalism.

Nobody is equipped to deal with a monster like Tunga Khan: heroism in such a situation is an entirely personal issue. Eddie Albert’s Pether begins as a Class-A fool. The fine actress Betty Field is directed to gripe and whine so much, we tolerate Florrie only because Dr. Cartwright can. Agatha Andrews cannot handle losing control of her mission, and becomes less than useless. The even-tempered Miss Binns quietly accepts Dr. Cartwright’s pragmatic leadership, and the Doctor’s example helps Jane Argent get free of Agatha’s domination. Even Miss Ling admires the lady doctor. She alone knows the ‘deal’ Cartwright has made with Tunga Khan. Ling is Khan’s captive as well, and at one point she gives Cartwright a passing touch-caress, of solidarity. Who says Ford can’t deal in subtleties?

The film’s thesis isn’t anti- religion or anti- missionary, even when events show that the faith of lost souls like Pether is mostly illusory. The more humanist and ‘Christian’ code for living proves to be that of the secular lady doctor. Trying to make Pether see the dangers with problem babies, she tells him that when previous deliveries went wrong, ‘God’ never came down to provide assistance. Pether eventually comes to his senses, just as young Emma rejects the unstable Agatha. Confronted with a no-win dilemma, Dr. Cartwright takes on a fearsome duty because her oath says it’s the only thing to do.

7 Women is more sensitive to Asians than was American culture in general. Ford is not concerned that his Mongolian bandits are played by stock Hollywood baddies, some given yellow-face makeup. That was still the norm in the 1960s. Back in The Searchers, Ward Bond’s Reverend called the Comanches ‘childish savages.’ Ford’s Mongols represent a crude force of barbarity, but not one taken from the Yellow Peril playbook. Five years earlier, actor Woody Strode was championed with a starring role in a John Ford western, but two outings later, he’s back to playing a monosyllabic barbarian. In the confines of their roles, Strode and old Mike Mazurki are excellent — their bandit leaders must express everything without dialogue.

A ‘recognition joke’ will tickle fans that read John Ford movies closely: on the mission porch Tunga Khan pauses for a moment before Florrie’s rocking chair … does even he wish for a retirement by the home fire?  “Kind words, Ethan …”

We hear secondhand descriptions of Tunga Khan’s atrocities, and his gang carries out a massacre in Andrews’ mission compound. A mortal-combat wrestling match keeps us from wondering why Khan doesn’t repeat the orgy of rape and murder suffered by Miss Binns’ mission. But the reason the bandit pauses does feel a little Fu Manchu-ish: Khan wants the ‘beautiful white woman,’ Cartwright of course.

Along the way we get some bits of dialogue that do belong back in the 1930s. After the massacre, Emma tells Cartwright that ‘now she knows what evil really is.’  Anna Lee’s Mrs. Russell goes too patly bonkers, peering out at the compound to see what the Mongols’ next outrage will be. Cartwright and Miss Binns know that Agatha Andrews is totally mad when she starts making up Bible quotes, proclaiming that Cartwright is the Whore of Babylon.

Compensating mightily are moments of great tenderness. At her one sit-down talk with Agatha Andrews, Dr. Cartwright senses the woman’s inner disturbance. Agatha seems even more unbalanced, when she admits that ‘God is not enough.’  At their parting, the doctor and Jane Argent exchange a female-female hug and kiss. The gesture resonates with the male-male handclasp between Edward Woodward and Bryan Brown at the finale of  Breaker Morant.

Dr. Cartwright doesn’t subscribe to the hysteria about ‘fates worse than death’ but she has sense enough to realize that Tunga Khan is not likely to let her leave alive. She must find comfort in her own ironic joke. A few years later, the fate-worse-than ethos became a joke in Sydney Pollack’s  The Scalphunters: when Shelley Winters’ fellow prostitutes are captured by a clearly ‘interested’ band of Indian braves, she takes a practical view of the situation:  “What the hell, they’re only men!”

As darkness closes in 7 Women leans toward the expressionism of Ford’s ’30s work, the movies said to be influenced by his exposure to F.W. Murnau’s silents at Fox. Just when we can see no positive resolution, the darkened mission turns exotic, with gauze diffusion. Dr. Cartwright approaches down a dark corridor wearing an elegant robe, her hair done up in Chinese fashion. She’s an illusion, decked out to please a man. It’s the source story’s riveting ‘Chinese Finale,’ but it’s also an image of the human condition as experienced by women. It feels like John Ford’s answer to the profound finale of Max Ophuls’  Lola Montès:  Women as prisoners of male desire.

An opportunity may have been missed with this fine disc of 7 Women — just as we learned that The Warner Archive would release the film on Blu-ray, author and John Ford biographer Joseph McBride wished he could throw a flag on the play. He says that he and Julie Kirgo had previously investigated the possibility of reviving/restoring 6 minutes cut from the picture just before its general release. It was likely previewed with a final print of the long version, and some 16mm prints were created. Long-version printing elements may still exist.

The Warner restoration people are sensitive to the issue. They have rescued scores of films that had been shortened in release, and have waited to remaster some until good elements could be located:  Rachel and the Stranger,  They Won’t Believe Me. The story is better explained by McBride himself, in an Old New article hosted by writer R. Emmet Sweeney. The interview makes a compelling case for refurbishing John Ford’s final masterpiece:

The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of 7 Women will be a stunner for those accustomed to what’s been shown on TCM cablecasts — with its depth and detail, the improved image greatly elevates the presentation. Joseph LaShelle’s artful lighting changes as the film’s tension rises. The excellent Panavision compositions still show Ford’s distinctive visual style. We can now appreciate the excellent stage effects that create the illusion of a fire beyond distant hills.

Don’t judge by the weak colors in the web images shown here. The Blu-ray is rich and vibrant throughout. 7 Women is in excellent shape in HD.

We can’t see where the ‘missing’ footage was taken; unlike the ragged cuts in the same year’s  Major Dundee, MGM’s supervising editor Margaret Booth seems to have created smooth transitions to cover the lifts. From what we can see, we believe that the last-minute title change from “Chinese Finale” was effected with a few opening text cards, before hard-cutting back to the existing title sequence, which plays out over random live-action shots of Tunga Khan’s horsemen.

It looks as if the decision to sell the show as an action-sex adventure happened at the same time — the ad campaign resembles that of the exploitative war drama  Seven Women from Hell. Filmed on some nondescript movie ranch in Ventura county, the bandit horde behind the main titles looks suitable for a TV movie. Elmer Bernstein’s music score is very good, but that title cue is little different than the composer’s generic western themes.

We also wonder if MGM’s last-minute editorial compression altered the ending as well. Ford’s direction sets it up for a moment suitable for a horror item. The impact of the last image takes our breath away — but then the ending seems too rushed. A full screen of text intrudes before we can fully take in the meaning of a darkened room and a retreating camera move. After tightening the cut overall, did Margaret Booth also impose a rushed fade-out?  ^*

The studio-commissioned featurette for 7 Women shows the construction of the elaborate mission compound set, with staged shots of Ford, Bernard Smith and designer Eddie Imazu pointing at blueprints. Ford looks plenty old but spry; David Lynch is a dead ringer for him in that recent Spielberg autobio. About 2/3’s of the way through the featurette, the image suddenly cuts to beautiful color, indicating that the earlier part of the color negative hasn’t survived.

Also present is an original trailer and a fully remastered MGM cartoon. The Dot and the Line adapts the famed children’s book by architect-provocateur Norton Juster. [Look up his antics at his  wiki page, they’re pretty cute.] Chuck Jones interpreted Juster’s graphics for the screen.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

7 Women
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Original featurette on building the sets for 7 Women
MGM cartoon The Dot and the Line
Original Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: August 27, 2025
(7385wome)

^*  We’re told that MGM’s Margaret Booth personally tweaked most of the studio’s ’60s films. Sam Peckinpah’s biographers reported that the expressive editorial eccentricities in his MGM masterpiece  Ride the High Country survived only because the front office wanted to rush the film through the system — Margaret Booth didn’t get a chance to ‘bring the cut up to MGM standards.’  That said, Ms. Booth’s interventions surely improved many MGM movies.

Visit CineSavant’s Main Column Page
Glenn Erickson answers most reader mail: cinesavant@gmail.com

Text © Copyright 2025 Glenn Erickson