7 Women

In 1935, an isolated American mission station in northern China finds itself at the mercy of the Mongolian warlord Tunga Khan and his band of raiders. The community is made up largely of women, led by the stern Agatha Andrews, and their settled routine is already strained when Dr. D.R. Cartwright arrives. Cartwright is a forthright, unconventional physician whose manners and methods set her at odds with the devout women around her, though her competence proves valuable when illness strikes the station. When Tunga Khan seizes control of the mission and holds its women captive, Cartwright takes it upon herself to negotiate for the safety of the others, a decision that places her directly in the warlord's path.

John Ford directed the film, the thirty-first of thirty-one features listed in his filmography in chronological order, following Cheyenne Autumn the previous year. The screenplay was written by John McCormick and Janet Green, and Bernard Smith and Ford produced for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, John Ford Productions and Bernard Smith Productions, on a budget of about two million dollars. Anne Bancroft plays Dr. Cartwright, with Margaret Leighton as Agatha Andrews, Sue Lyon as Emma Clark, Flora Robson, Mildred Dunnock and Betty Field among the women of the mission.

The film runs eighty-seven minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.7 from around three thousand votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.5 from a much smaller group of seventy-eight votes, so the two audiences are broadly in agreement.