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Touches You

Thanks for the memories!

Memorable, crazy movie

It is a performances centric movie

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.

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!

I am still reeling from the powerful ending to this unspoken of movie. John Ford's last entry onto his glittering resumé stuns while it holds your interest at every turn of a scene.It is so hard to resist talking about the ending of this movie. It seethes with so much devastating darkness. And yet, within this darkness, there is a human victory so profoundly complex as to take your breath away in resignation, anger, shock and inevitable acceptance.Anne Bancroft has always been one of my favorite actresses. With all her celebrated roles, I still feel that the depth of talent has never been fully appreciated.Yet, in this role, she displays her talents aplenty.I recommend this seldomly seen movie and I hope it will be brought to VHS or DVD one day so that more will see this movie and its production will not be in vain.

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!