The fact-based story of the pioneer of nursing, known as "the Lady with the Lamp".The fact-based story of the pioneer of nursing, known as "the Lady with the Lamp".The fact-based story of the pioneer of nursing, known as "the Lady with the Lamp".
Richard Milnes: [voice over, as Narrator] Those of you who ask, "Who is this Florence Nightingale, and what did she do?", you would have to understand the world into which she was born. It was England, Dickens' England. Where the people were divided into two classes: the very rich and the very poor. But whether rich or poor, it was a time of great medical ignorance, when to fracture an arm or a leg was to lose it.
The background illustrations in the opening credits are wood engravings by Gustave Dore from 'London: A Pilgrimage' (published 1876, although he worked on them from 1870 onwards).
Although I might not have thought of former Charley's Angel Jaclyn Smith as my
choice for Florence Nightingale, Smith does a nice job in the role. She joins Kay
Francis and Anna Neagle who had gone before her playing The Lady with a lamp.
Florence Nightingale quite early on was determined that she would not lead the
life of a Jane Austen type Victorian woman. Learn needlepoint and wait for a
good match for a husband. And make the best of it if the match ain't so good.
She wanted a life of service and she went to Germany to learn nursing. She
went to work in the Crimean War resisted by the military establishment, partly
because it was foreign ideas she was espousing and mostly because she was a
woman.
Nevertheless she persisted and her ideas on hospital care and nursing care are
so standard today they seem obvious. Still a battle had to be fought and won.
In the male cast members to Timothys stand out. Timothy Dalton plays her fiance Richard Milnes whom she painfully rejects for her nursing mission. The
other is Timothy West playing William Russell of the London Times whose
reporting from the Crimea made her a national heroine. His is a life that a
movie could be made from.
Jaclyn Smith joins Kay Francis and Anna Neagle in portraying Florence Nightingale beautifully and well.
