7 WOMEN

John Ford's last great western, as well as his last film, wasn't a western at all but is set in (an artificial looking) China in 1935 near its border with Mongolia and is about a mission fort populated mostly by the SEVEN WOMEN of the title as well as a few token men including Eddie Albert's wannabe preacher and menaced by plague and Mike Mazurki's warlord. It's a cross between those 'yellow peril' movies of the thirties and Ford's cavalry pictures, (minus the cavalry, of course, and the Indians), and while it was largely dismissed at the time is now seen as one of Ford's late masterpieces. It has a very fine script by John McCormick and Janet Green and is beautifully acted by everyone while Ford's handling of the tensions that exist in a tight-knit community of women, (particularly a tight-knit community of women who are likely to be raped and murdered at any moment), is exemplary.