SEVEN WOMEN
US, 1965, 87 minutes, Colour.
Anne Bancroft, Margaret Leighton, Sue Lyons, Flora Robson, Mildred Dunnock, Betty Field, Eddie Albert.
Directed by John Ford.
John Ford began his directing career in 1917. Almost fifty years later he directed his last feature film, Seven Women. Ford had directed during the silent era, had made a big impact during the 1930s with a range of films from Mary of Scotland, The Plough and the Stars, Wee Willie Winkie and The Hurricane. However, with Stagecoach in 1939 as well as Young Mr Lincoln and Drums Along the Mohawk that same year, he came into his own. He had won an Oscar for directing The Informer in 1935, was to win another for The Grapes of Wrath in 1940 as well as How Green Was My Valley in 1941. He also won an Oscar for best director for The Quiet Man in 1952.
Ford was best known for westerns, especially with John Wayne, and a portrait of the American cavalry and its activities in the west. It seems a strange choice for him to have made Seven Women as his last film – following on Cheyenne Autumn.
Seven Women is a film about dedicated missionary women in China in the 1930s. A group of Mongolians led by a warlord is attacking their mission. They have to protect themselves.
The film is particularly interesting for its cast. Anne Bancroft is the leader of the mission. Margaret Leighton is the overall head. Flora Robson is the head of the British mission. Other women include Sue Lyon (after appearing in Lolita and The Night of the Iguana), Flora Robson, Betty Field, Anna Lee. The men in the cast include Eddie Albert as a mission teacher and Woody Strode as a warrior.
The film is a mixture of psychological drama as the women interact amongst themselves as well as an action drama in an exotic setting, something which Ford was able to communicate well.
Anne Bancroft had won an Oscar in 1962 for The Pumpkin Eater and was soon to appear as Mrs Robinson in The Graduate. She is a strong presence (chain-smoking, doctor with a sharp tongue, atheist) who challenges the authority of the mission head, played by Margaret Leighton in one of her many neurotic performances.
1. The focus of the title, especially on the women? The women as individuals and as a group?
2. The importance of the wide screen photography, colour, music?
3. The atmosphere of China as a location? How was it helped by the sets?
4. John Ford as director of this film? Its qualities, his traditions with westerns? Noticeable here?
5. Audience response to the presentation of the mission, the nature of the work done and its value? The way in which it was done? The picture of Christianity, strengths and weaknesses? The puritanical attitudes of the staff? As illustrated in the lessons and way of life at the mission? Miss Andrews and her leading the mission, influencing the mission by her attitudes and ways? Her hold over the missionaries and the Chinese? Pethen and his role at the mission, as a man? Teacher? His wife and her hysteria? The atmosphere of loyalty, the neurotic hold of Miss Andrews and loyalty? The anticipation of the doctor? Did the film make any value judgements about the nature of such missions?
6. The film's focus on Miss Andrews: as a person, as one of the women, the nature of her intensity, her investment of her life in the mission, her running of others and dominance, the attraction and hold over Emma, the sexual undertones in her unwillingness to face these, her immediate hostilities and fears, her reaction to childbirth? The effect of the loss of everything on her? Her bordering on the brink of madness? What comment on her as a woman, as a missionary?
7. The doctor and the anticipation of her arrival? Her style, her background in America, the reason for her being there? The doctor as a woman? Her skill as a doctor? Her rough attitudes and yet her knowledge of life? Her reactions to each of the missionaries, telling them the truth? The effect of her own story on her life? Comment on her dedication as a doctor, her coping with the plague, the significance of her getting drunk after it?
8. How important were the choices for the doctor? Her way of saving people? The clash of values with puritanical outlooks? Her good nature? And yet the hurt of the choice? Comment on the visual impression of this? The lead-up to her death? The rough irony of her last words and the last sight of her? How interesting a character?
9. Comment on Emma as a growing woman, her role in the mission, her dedication to her work, her response to Miss Andrews, her attraction to the doctor? The dilemma of the choice between the values Miss Andrews presented and the contrast with the values the doctor presented? How important was this dilemma as a focus for the values of the film and the exploration of women?
10. The role of Pethen and his wife? Pethen and his inadequacy, the significance of his death? His wife and her fear of the child, her possessiveness, her consciousness of her age, hysteria? What did she contribute to the mission? What insight into femininity?
11. The older missionary and her helping and support of Miss Andrews?
12. The contrast with the two missionaries who came with the fleeing victims? A different denomination, their missionary style, the two personalities as women? Their contribution to Miss Andrews' mission?
13. The background of China and its barbarity? The chiefs and their ruthlessness, their violence and their sexuality? The barbaric fight, the women terrorized, the doctor and sexuality? What comment was made on this barbarism?
14. How did it contrast with American values and way of life? The women as standing for western and American values? Choices, contrasts?
15. The insight into religion as tested by real and violent situations?
16. Comment on the film's attitude towards morality, right and wrong, a sense of right and wrong, appearances and reality? What is the basis of moral choice? How should moral choices be exercised, for oneself, conscience, others?
17. The insight into men and women? Into life and death?
