O Anjo de Caridade

Kay Francis stars in this biopic of Florence Nightingale. I love old Hollywood biopics. They get a lot of flack today by certain types for embellishing some facts of these people's lives. Seems to me biopics today have even worse flaws. Instead of embellishing positively they embellish negatively. In other words, instead of focusing on inspiring uplifting strengths and virtues they focus on the faults and vices of historical figures. To each their own but personally I will take the rousing biographical films from back then over the salacious and often slanderous ones of the modern era.

Rant aside, this is not the strongest biopic but it is a decent one. Kay Francis works against type quite well. She's helped by an amazing supporting cast. To name a few: Donald Crisp, Nigel Bruce, Donald Woods, Henry O'Neill, Ian Hunter, Halliwell Hobbes -- they all give first rate support.

Overall it's an entertaining film. I recommend it to people who are interested In the story of Florence Nightingale and anybody who enjoys Golden Age of Hollywood biographical dramas.

The White Angel which was a film about the crucial years in the life of Florence Nightingale when she during the Crimean War popularized the career of nursing for women and sanitary hospitals. Her work in Great Britain and Clara Barton in the USA during the Civil War set the standards for the nursing profession as we know it now.

Nightingale came from an upper class background and that probably stood her in good stead because someone who had to worry about how the next month's rent was to be paid or the next meal coming from could not have taken on what she did or faced down the sexist attitudes of her age.

The British cinema did the best version of her life in 1951 with Anna Neagle playing Nightingale. Besides Florence herself the real name of only one other character is used, that of Lord Raglan the Commander of the British forces in the Crimea played here by Halliwell Hobbes. The real players are used in the Neagle film.

This was a change of pace for Kay Francis who usually was more glamorous in her roles than here. Francis reminds me a lot of Rosaland Russell when she did Sister Kenny.

This was part of Warner Brothers biographical films of the late 30s and The White Angel was the only one to have a female subject. The White Angel bogs down a bit in spots and for a more accurate film the Neagle picture is better. Still this is reasonably entertaining and Kay Francis fans will like it.

William Dieterle, like so many of his contemporaries, left Germany in the 1930's and headed for Tinseltown. He proved himself very adaptable and whilst under contract to Warner Brothers, raised that studio's prestige by directing a series of well-mounted biopics. Invariably set in foreign climes these studio-bound films were all totally convincing in terms of period and place.

This biopic of Florence Nightingale is no exception and although considered the weakest of them all, not least by Dieterle himself, it remains a convincing portrait of Victorian England with its squalor and class-ridden complacency regarding the plight of the lower orders and the general view that nursing was little better than prostitution. It is no less effective when switching to the Crimea and the horrendous conditions that prevailed in the soldiers' hospital at Scutari.

Historically of course it is Hollywood Hokum and full of inaccuracies but it succeeds in its purpose of depicting a truly extraordinary woman and her battle with institutionalised ignorance and prejudice.

Dieterle's customary visual sense is complemented by two stalwarts of Warner Bros, cinematographer Tony Gaudio and the brilliant head of Art Direction, Polish émigré, Anton Grot.

It is generally agreed that the weak link lies in the casting of Kay Francis as Florence. She was at the time Queen of the Lot at Warner Bros and its highest paid star. This, coupled with her innate classiness would make her the obvious choice. She is certainly not lacking in sincerity and it is not her fault that her part has been written more as a symbol than as flesh and blood which alas makes the character rather one-dimensional. Ian Hunter does his best with another one-dimensional role as a reporter for 'The Times' and Donald Crisp excels as the odious Dr. Hunt.

Whatever its shortcomings this version is infinitely more powerful and engaging than that of Herbert Wilcox in 1950 which is little more than a series of tableaux-vivants.

Suffice to say that since her death Miss Nightingale's achievements and far-reaching influence have been overshadowed by suggestions of misogyny, lesbianism and racism! She remains however a Feminist icon despite her observation that although they might crave sympathy "women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe."

It's very melodramatic, reminding me of Young Tom Edison. Every "tidbit" the average person knows about the famous person is included in the script, in the most saccharine-style possible. Months after she sits up all night with Billy Mauch when he's ill, he finds her sitting in the snow. "I'm taking care of you now," he says as he gives her his coat. There are countless scenes like that one, as costars who play coworkers of Florence Nightingale praise her selflessness and dedication to her patients. In another scene, she comes down with cholera, and rather than letting the medical staff carry her away on a stretcher, the soldiers in the trench insist on doing it. That's fine, but one soldier actually says, "We'll do it! Who cares about cholera?" Way too corny for my taste.

But, if that's why you're watching the movie, you might not mind the style. I minded, because I was hoping for a more historical approach as to why she became a nurse, rather than just scene after scene of her forgoing sleep in order to sit up with a sick patient. There's a little portion of the beginning that shows her decline a marriage proposal in favor of medical school, but it's not very explanatory. There is a large supporting cast, though, including Henry O'Neill, Ian Hunter, Halliwell Hobbes, Nigel Bruce, Donald Crisp, Donald Woods, Fay Holden, and E. E. Clive. Watch at your own risk, and only if you like dated biopics.

In the grand tradition of biography pictures that sanctify their subjects comes "The White Angel," the "true" story of the lady with the lamp, the nurse who revolutionized nursing, Miss Florence Nightingale. Why does Hollywood insist on sanitizing and sweetening the lives of real people? The most blatant example of this is probably "Private Parts"- the life story of Howard Stern- which turns America's favorite sexually-stunted shock-jock bully into a misunderstood merry prankster, a teddy bear of a man fighting the good fight against prudes and censors. Right.

I caught "The White Angel" on TCM late one evening. It begins with Florence Nightingale- "Flo" to her contemporaries- rejecting tradition and refusing to marry and settle down. She senses a greater purpose and a place for women in military medicine. [In actuality Florence and her sister were encouraged to pursue education by their forward-thinking father.] As played by Kay Francis, Ms. Nightingale is a humorless, passionless saint with absolute confidence in her methods and philosophy. Kay plays the role as if she's riding a heroin high- deeply centered and somewhat removed. With the success of the film riding on this lead performance, we're left with a fascinatingly anti-climactic picture.

There is little if any dramatic conflict in the film- it has all the suspense of a book report. The encounters between Florence and other characters are all laughably wooden. Her antagonists openly profess their resentment of her to her face and she sits stoic, with eyes-wide, accepting the abuse and calmly declaring her intentions to proceed. In one particularly action-less sequence, Florence and her nurses storm the supply tent after the clerk tells them it's closed. "Does the war close at seven?" Florence asks, "Do they stop bringing in the wounded at seven?"

Before the bureaucrat gets the chance to answer, Florence has delicately and glamorously stepped past him, forcing her way inside with the help of the other nurses.

That's the most exciting moment in the movie.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow stops by to gawk at her heroism and write the poem that would immortalize her. Crusty wounded soldiers smile at her tenderness as she walks the hospital halls at night checking on her patients. I had trouble keeping mine.

The story seems SO glossed-over and tidy (even for a biopic of the 30's) that one can't help but feel cheated by fabricated elements as well as the absence of significant actual events. When Florence arrives at the military hospital a soldier informs her that 57% of all wounded men die even under medical care... the trouble is we're never given an updated number as to a soldier's chance of survival. This is especially ironic due to the fact that a)Florence's Nightingale's arrival and improvement of the military medical system surely improved the survival rate and b) Nightingale herself was famous for her statistical analysis and record-keeping of mortality rates and other social phenomenas. Disappointing.

The film is ultimately a waste; it is predictable and pre-digested, not even diverting enough to hold my attention. Who knew changing the world could be so boring?

Grade: C