![]() An air of melancholy permeates the material too. While at the same time the film subtly explores some universal themes that will resonate strongly with audiences. The Nightingale is a pleasant road movie that offers up a subtle criticism of the consumerism of contemporary China and the unintended consequences of its one-child policy, which has produced a generation of spoiled, self-absorbed kids. In fact, it transplants the themes and central characters from the bucolic French countryside to rural China very effectively. ![]() Philippe Muyl directs with sensitivity and compassion, and the film shares a few thematic similarities with his 2002 drama The Butterfly. But as the pair become lost overnight in a dense forest they begin to bond. Grandfather carries with him his beloved nightingale in a cage, hence the title. Xing is a spoiled, precocious, petulant and selfish little brat who is resentful of having to leave behind the creature comforts of her luxurious apartment in Beijing for the rustic countryside. Zhu desires to return to his small hometown in the country for sentimental purposes, and takes Xing along. Xing’s father Chong (Hao Qin) is dubious of the arrangement, as his father temporarily lost Xing in a crowded marketplace four years earlier, and he is worried that something may happen. When her workaholic parents have to go on trips, young Ren Xing (Xin Yi Yang) is reluctantly left in the care of her estranged grandfather Zhu Zhigen (veteran Chinese actor Li Baotian, from Shanghai Triad), a widower who lives in a small apartment in Beijing. There is so much more to Florence Nightingale in her life and work, but The Lady With The Lamp will give you a fine introduction to one of the most useful lives spent on earth.This French Chinese co-production is a beautiful and moving film, with a lot of heart and charm, and it has broad appeal. ![]() Neagle is compassionate, determined and regal in her performance. Later on when American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used the line about The Lady With The Lamp in one of his works, even though it wasn't about Florence Nightingale the line became a signature for her. Nightingale's image with the oil lamp going about the dimly lit wards looking after her charges became her popular image thanks to the London Times reporting of the hospital conditions for the wounded troops in the Crimean War, one of the first examples of investigative journalism. Seeing some of these people arguing seriously that proper nursing care was coddling the troops is truly frightening. Lord Palmerston is sympathetically played by Felix Aylmer and Wilding's greatest opponent is played by Arthur Young as William Gladstone who was Chancellor of the Exchequer and guardian of the nation's purse as it were. Herbert is played her by a dapper and charming Michael Wilding who struggles tirelessly to get support among his colleagues for Nightingale's work nursing the soldiers in the Crimea and improving the sanitary conditions under which the wounded convalesced. The film and play with brief prologues and epilogues in her old age covers the period of the Crimean War through the death of her friend and ally in the Palmerston cabinet Lord Sidney Herbert. Her interest in medicine dismayed her family who just wanted her to get married and settle down and do needlepoint if she wanted to create. ![]() Nightingale was a woman born to the landed gentry whose family hobnobbed with a lot of the movers and shakers in the British Empire. She thought a lot of them ought to be spending equal time participating in the profession she was trying to open up. At a time when she was trying to open up the nursing profession for women she received little support from those who wanted the vote. The follow up to director Jennifer Kent ’s debut horror tale The Babadook, The Nightingale delves into a very different kind of horror, that of the British colonization of Tasmania. Oddly enough she was not crazy about the suffrage movement in and of itself. The Nightingale is a graphic, brutal film full of 19th century colonial rage. She played Queen Victoria, Edith Cavell, and Nell Gwyn before essaying Florence Nightingale who was a feminist icon way back in the day before women had the franchise. Anna Neagle set some kind of record in her career playing more female British icons than anyone else. The husband and wife producing and acting team of Herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle took a play written by Reginald Berkeley and ran a mere 12 performances on Broadway in 1931 as a vehicle for Anna Neagle giving her one of her most popular roles. ![]()
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