Artist 7 Women

John Ford's final film, 7 Women, upends a few expectations for anyone who worships such Western masterpieces as The Searchers. Anne Bancroft wears the pants as a short-haired, swearing doctor dispatched to work on a Christian mission run by American women in China in the 1930s. Bancroft's arrival sends mission head Margaret Leighton into a bubbling spiral of disgust and repression. They've no choice but to tolerate each other as a Mongolian warlord (just as delicately portrayed as any of Ford's Indians, rest assured) menaces the frontier, driving in cholera-carrying refugees from another mission. When the bandits inevitably ride through the mission gates, events turn startlingly brutal—but the way Bancroft rises to the occasion is the most magnificent shock of all. 

Updated 03/16/2010