The final films of the great filmmakers can be a mixed bag with truly memorable works being very much the exception. Not unnaturally, a certain tiredness can creep in, the quest for originality may bring about misfires or confusion. This is all to be expected when careers are long and that very longevity has had to confront changing trends and shrinking budgets. Those last two factors are hard to avoid but the real artists are forever chasing truth in their art and sometimes they can touch upon it in spite of the constraints imposed by the passage of time. Of course the great artists will already have found their truth and if we (or they) are fortunate, then that truth may find expression as a distillation of the themes explored in their peak years. John Ford was without doubt one of the greats and maybe even the greatest. His final movie 7 Women (1965) has not always enjoyed a strong reputation yet I believe it deserves better, and I also see it as providing a fine coda to a remarkable career.

A lot of the critical dissatisfaction with 7 Women stems from the fact that it appears to be something of an atypical Ford film. It is not set in the American West nor is it focused particularly on what might be termed the American experience – it is not easy to frame as one of his examples of myth building. It does not allow for the inclusion of any of his Irishness, not even in its minor characters, and there is little if any examination of masculinity. Still, to criticize it on those terms is  to succumb to no more than a superficial reading of Ford. Sure he blended the aforementioned elements into so many of his films, almost all of his best works contained one or more of them – How Green Was My Valley is one the major titles which stands out as not doing so. To focus on that would be to buy too completely into Ford’s own blarney and “I make westerns” shtick. The fact is he was most interested in the cohesiveness of communities, questions of faith and duty, and the truth lurking behind facades. 7 Women keeps the spotlight firmly trained on all of these.

The on screen text informs the viewer that the story is taking place in the years before WWII, in 1935 to be exact, in a remote and far-flung region of China. In essence, it is the frontier, just not the frontier of the Old West that one so readily associates with Ford. Instead this is the Far East yet it is no less a frontier for being located there – it is still the edge of civilization, that untamed region where law is but a casual interloper at best. Officially, this should have been a time when the warlord era had come to  close in China, but that’s not the case here. The specter of Tunga Khan (Mike Mazurki) hangs like a threatening storm over everybody’s head. The fear of pillage and atrocity is never far from the thoughts of the occupants of the evangelical mission run with clear-eyed determination by Agatha Andrews (Margaret Leighton). Despite this messianic zeal, there are deep and powerful undercurrents raging within the mission and its members. The one married woman present (Betty Field) is pregnant while approaching menopause and her ineffectual husband (Eddie Albert) is a dithering dreamer, while Andrews is waging a private war with her own sexuality and struggling against the temptation represented by her young assistant Emma (Sue Lyon). Into this increasingly tense atmosphere arrives the new doctor, the brash and worldly Cartwright (Anne Bancroft). Her unorthodox – at least from Andrews’ perspective – approach to life helps to raise an already simmering emotional temperature while an outbreak of cholera sees the balance of power begin to slide. However, the ultimate challenge, not simply to Andrews but to all of the denizens of the mission, will come when Tunga Khan’s rampaging bandits crash through the gates and take control.

Ford’s films were always liberally sprinkled with grace notes, quiet and reflective sequences that served to bookend the more vigorous passages. In a movie which has been criticized for its visual modesty the violence and terror of the bandits’ assault is calmly foreshadowed by Bancroft and Albert gazing at an evening sky bathed in the boiling and throbbing flames cast by a neighboring settlement being put to the sword. Moments like that do not reach the levels of splendor which were attained in masterpieces such as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, for instance, and it would be foolish to try to draw any such comparison. Nevertheless, within the context and framework of the movie before us there is still the classic Fordian human bonding on display. The same can be said for the scene with Andrews and Cartwright sitting below the tree in the courtyard in the wake of the cholera episode, a small moment of shared compassion that rounds out the characters. Even simple shots such as that of Cartwright drawing on a cigarette behind the shade of a mosquito net, separate, self-contained and lonely, are effective due to their quiet simplicity. Color is used sparingly but intelligently as well. So much of the movie is shot in subdued tones – the cool and severe blues and greys favored by Andrews and her fellow missionaries, the earthy browns of Cartwright. And then the climactic appearance of Cartwright clad in shimmering yellow, with that slash of crimson, a burst of positivity and passion emerging from the darkness as she prepares to sacrifice herself.

I briefly mentioned faith above, and want to return to that for a moment. It’s been said before that religion played a big part in Ford’s work, an assertion I only partially agree with. Is it not more accurate to state that faith and perhaps a broader notion of spirituality were stronger drivers? Religion, and certainly religiosity and sanctimony were never really celebrated. Redemption and the need for renewal, on the other hand, are common features. All of the characters in 7 Women are spiritual searchers of one kind or another.  All have come to this spot on the periphery of the civilized world hoping to find that which was denied to them at home. Andrews is dangerously repressed and existing at the border of her own psychological frailty. She has sought alternative fulfillment in religion but has grown aware of the fact it was not and is not enough, and is thus driven out of her mind. Eddie Albert’s Pether has finally married late in life and is busy seeking a fugitive form of contentment in the ersatz ministry he’s building around himself. In the end he chances upon some dormant nobility in his own rediscovered courage. At the heart of it all is Cartwright, a woman who through sacrifice unearths meaning in a life formerly wasted and marked by both personal and professional failure. This cigarette smoking whiskey drinker, contemptuous of piety, hypocrisy and cant reveals herself as a humanitarian in the truest sense of the word.

Anne Bancroft wasn’t the first choice to play Cartwright. Patricia Neal had started work on the movie but suffered a stroke so a replacement had to be found. Ford is on record as not rating her work but he was wrong about that – she has grit and toughness with just enough of that hint of vulnerability to fuel the soulful regret that defines the character, a woman wryly reconciled to the impishness of fate. Much as I admire Neal as an actress, I doubt she could have done better in the part. Margaret Leighton also fully inhabited her role and touches on some of that inner fragility she used so expertly in Carrington V.C. and The Sound and the Fury. Among the other cast members Flora Robson brings out that well-bred restraint that was her trademark. And it’s a pleasure to watch Anne Lee in one final Ford movie – a woman I will forever think of as Bronwyn in How Green Was My Valley and Mrs Collingwood (“All I can see is the flags”) in Fort Apache.

7 Women has been one of John Ford’s most neglected films, languishing in the critical stakes and seemingly forgotten when it came to home video releases. The absence of an official release on any form of physical disc was nothing if not conspicuous. Recently though, the Warner Archive Collection has made it available on a beautiful looking Blu-ray. Having seen the film multiple times over the years in less than stellar presentations, I can say this new release is a revelation, one which effortlessly elevates the movie. I sincerely hope this fine version prompts a reassessment of what to me are the clear merits of Ford’s final movie.

As this will be my final posting for 2025 I want to take the opportunity to wish all the visitors and contributors to this site over the last 12 months a happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year. Thank you all.

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