best movie i've ever seen.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

These "Mongol" bandits speak (rather poor) Mandarin Chinese rather than Mongolian, and the wrestling scene showed absolutely nothing of the famous Mongolian wrestling style. Other than that, I enjoyed the movie (shown on the Turner Classic Movies channel). It was a bit disappointing that Ford did not choose an East Asian to play the main "Mongolian" role - just as actresses like Katherine Hepburn played Chinese in movies like The Good Earth - but given the facts of Hollywood life at that time, this is understandable. An interesting subplot runs between the doctor and the head of mission: who is more Christ-like, she who talks the talk or she who walks the walk?

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..."

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 ****

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.