John Ford's final film is a real curiosity. Anne Bancroft plays a butch doctor sent to work at a mission in China and ruffles the feathers of most of the missions, especially Margaret Leighton.
7 WOMEN is very studio bound and has a real half-hearted feel to it. Bancroft, a last minute replacement for Patricia Neal, is actually TOO strong and her character is really unappealing. Leighton is shrewish and the other women in the classy cast including Flora Robson, Mildred Dunnock and Sue Lyon barely register. And why is 53 year old Betty Field playing a pregnant woman? Her husband is the equally aged Eddie Albert. Mike Mazurki offers a cartoon character version of a savage who invades the mission and puts the disruptive Bancroft in her place. Ford may have viewed himself as a man of the Indians, but he really had no clue of how to handle women!
7 WOMEN is very studio bound and has a real half-hearted feel to it. Bancroft, a last minute replacement for Patricia Neal, is actually TOO strong and her character is really unappealing. Leighton is shrewish and the other women in the classy cast including Flora Robson, Mildred Dunnock and Sue Lyon barely register. And why is 53 year old Betty Field playing a pregnant woman? Her husband is the equally aged Eddie Albert. Mike Mazurki offers a cartoon character version of a savage who invades the mission and puts the disruptive Bancroft in her place. Ford may have viewed himself as a man of the Indians, but he really had no clue of how to handle women!