7 Women

Director: John Ford

1966 / 87min / DCP

For his final film, the preeminent poet of the American West on screen lit out for the East, or at least a soundstage version of it—and eschewed his usual masculine ensembles for a decidedly more feminine group. Ford’s swansong takes place among a group of female Christian missionaries—Anne Bancroft, Sue Lyon, and Margaret Leighton among their number—in a c. 1935 rural China ravaged by cholera and ransacked by Mongolian warlord Tunga Khan (hulking wrestler Mike Mazurki), whose horde, including Ford regular Woody Strode, pose a clear and present danger to the ladies’ redoubt. “Ford brings a mix of rigor and playfulness, of something hieratic and something erratic, because he allows a bit of playfulness into the game and puts himself into it… The truth, in Ford’s films, is not at the end of the trail, but always before there has even been a road.” —Serge Daney

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Part of Last Testaments