The White Angel

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.

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."

I come from a family of nurses, so I watched this film with interest.

Kay Francis plays Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. Mostly the film covers her work in the Crimea.

This is a typical '30s movie - Nightingale meets with a great deal of resistance, which she probably did in real life. The villains here are somewhat cliched in their nastiness and refusal to help her make any progress. A typical good vs. Evil fight.

I read a lot of criticism about Kay Francis - this was an unusual role for her, where she's not playing a woman of the world. I thought she portrayed a quiet strength and dignity.

Someone said Bette Davis would have been better. Bette Davis was wonderful, but I didn't feel Nightingale needed a fiery portrayal. As far as criticism of Francis, Francis' interpretation was correct in that she was well-educated and came from a wealthy family.

Granted she's portrayed as a saint, but that's the fault of the script. I do believe that Nightingale, given her upbringing, was a strong and determined woman who used a velvet glove rather than an iron hand.

I found the film very absorbing and poignant.

... in that the only reason I can figure this film is legendary as a bomb is that Kay Francis was not accepted in her role just as Clark Gable was not accepted at the time in Parnell.

Francis was normally the leading lady in sparkling romantic comedies, her most prolific years being the precode ones. She also played the tragic figure in romantic dramas where she might sacrifice to protect a child, or she was misunderstood and believed to be unfaithful and ostracized, or was partnered up with an abusive man. But playing 19th century pioneering nurse Florence Nightingale? This was a complete departure and would be as odd as seeing Errol Flynn play Abraham Lincoln.

Plus Kay doesn't project much genuine emotion during the film. Somebody Florence might have married had she taken the conventional path dies right before her eyes and ... nothing? No tears? Since director Dieterle also directed Paul Muni in The Story of Louis Pasteur the year before, there is no explanation for what happened here.

This film actually didn't bomb, but it was the beginning of the end of Kay at Warner Brothers as her relationship with Jack Warner quickly deteriorated and he realized that Bette Davis was the studio's female star of the present and future.

One thing the film did particularly poorly - All of those intertitles! Some of them are so busy it is like reading a book. Eight years past the transition to sound and this device had been largely abandoned as directors learned to change scenes without it.

This one is worth your time if you forget your preconceived notions about its classification as a bomb and just give it a fair chance.

Kay Francis was cast as Florence Nightingale and the film shows Florence from the time just before she dedicated her life to nursing to just after her return from the Crimean War. Francis' acting and that of most of the supporting actors was good--the dialog and details left a bit to be desired.

Hollywood sure loved bio-pics in the 30s and 40s and churned out gobs of them. The problem, though, is that while many were very entertaining, they also played rather fast and loose with the facts as well as had very, very high "schmaltz" levels on many occasions. In other words, the celebrities being portrayed were very often over-idealized and seemed more like living saints than 3-dimensional heroes. While Florence Nightingale was an absolutely amazing woman and deserved to have a film made about her, all too often the film degenerated into idol worship. My favorite over-the-top moment was when Flo entered the dilapidated hospital and the man ran screaming "water!!!"--what an amazingly unsubtle moment! While the general facts in the film are correct, the way they were realized on screen, at times, made me laugh. This is really a shame, as the real story of this woman should be good enough! As for me, I'd like to see a more realistic and less predictable treatment of her long life.