,, CINEMA -
"The Lady With a Lamp." (Warner.)—" Cyrano de Bergerac." (Carlton.) THE old argument about whether historical films (or historical plays and historical novels for that matter) should be accurate or not has always seemed to me quite easy of solution. The object of makers of films being, I hope, to entertain and not to educate the public, they should bend facts as much as is necessary to make history enter- taining, if, in course of reconstructing the life of Florence Nightin- gale for the screen, it had been thought essential to make her take a personal part in the charge of the Light Brigade and then marry Lord Raglan, I should not object on principle. Not, 1 hasten to add, that the Florence Nightingale of The Ldtly With a Lamp does any- thing of this sort. Mr. Herbert, Wilcox, who produced and directed the film, and Miss Anna Neagle, who plays the part of Florence Nightingale, have achieved reputations for painstaking attention to historical detail which they will not lightly surrender. And most of the details of this film—the settings, buildings, clothes, weapons and so on—are unobtrusively correct. I have only one purist com- plaint: to make Gladstone a bore and Strafford Canning an ass seems to me a distortion which adds nothing to the story.
The trouble with The Lady With a Lamp, which makes it only a good and not an outstanding film, is that it tries to give us both history and legend. We know now that Florence Nightingale was as much dragon as angel, and that she inspired terror as often as affection. Mr. Herbert Wilcox, however, has quite rightly refused to jettison the lamp for Lytton Strachey, although, to reassure the post-Strachey generation, he has tried to put in the dragon Nightin- gale as well. And this mixture of history and legend unfortunately doesn't work out. The fault is really the fault of Florence Nightingale herself. The Crimea was the climax of her life, and the fact that she lived for fifty years afterwards is historically true but artistically a nuisance. It is no use making her say, after Scutari: -" My real work has only just begun." No audience is going to believe it, and no author can be expected to make the years spent lying on a sofa writing blue books dramatically stimulating. But Florence Nightingale scribbles away, growing older and more dis- tinguished. The only emotion aroused is one of apprehension. For some day a conscientious historical film will be produced about the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, the closing scenes of which will not be the charge of the Emperor's guards across the battlefield of Waterloo, 'nut a series of boring conversations in Longwood with Sir Hudson Lowe. • Miss Neagle's performance is another argument in favour of giving us the legend pure and simple. It is careful, honest and at ease in its surroundings. Miss Neagle is without doubt a character from Victorian history. But although she hints at the -Florence Nightingale who gave generals apoplexy, it is never more than a hint, whereas there is a good deal of evidence that if she and her producer had been less punctilious they could have made the "lady with a lamp" legend alive. And, after all, the legend by now is history too. Miss Neagle is surrounded by a more than competent cast of eminent Victorians. Mr. Michael Wilding may be nothing much like the real Sidney Herbert, but this is nbt,a criticism that should worry anybody. Mr. Wilding is a useful person to have about in a film: the real Sidney Herbert was not. Mr. Felix Aylmer has the right degree of insouciance-for Lord Palmerston, but I should have recognised him more easily with a straw in his mouth.
While The Lady with a Lamp is at great pains to avoid the pitfalls of historical drama, Cyrano de Bergerac topples into most of them. This is not the France of Louis XIV, nor even Rostand's idea of the France of Louis XIV ; it is the France of Hollywood's costume departments. And yet of these two long films it is Cyrano de Bergerac that is likely to stay longer in the memory. The credit for this is entirely due to Mr. Jose Ferrer, Who has siezed the part of Cyrano, lifted it out of its mediocre surroundings, and made it human, dignified and plausible. For the initiated there will be comparisons of excellence to make with Mr. Ferrer's performance ; for the uninitiated, for whom after all this film is intended, he will remain the only Cyrano, and a very far from unworthy one.
EDWARD HODGKIN.
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