La lampada arde

I saw with some surprise that the 3 reviews were from people abroad so thought it time that someone from the UK should review this flag waver for nurses.One assumes that coming in the 4th year of the war this film was supposed to inspire women in the audience to come forward as recruits to the nursing profession.However what they saw in this film must have put them off for life.The student nurses seemed to be bound to obey a strict tradition which seems to have no regard to the change in circumstances.It appears to accept as norm that a woman had to choose between a career and marriage.The authority of matron and her sisters seems to be severely undermined by the pettiness of the rules.It is rather difficult then to understand why Johns should want to give up a job as an architect and start all over as a nurse particularly when she feels that she cannot abide the rules.I have a friend who was a nurse and she confirms that Matrons were very similar to those depicted in this film.

There are some nice historical details in this movie about the miserable conditions for student nurses in a wartime hospital in London during the Blitz. Rosamund John is a likeable heroine, although at the end you're left wondering if she's made the right choices and why she even had to make them at all. This part of the plot seems dated, until you look at it from the historical aspect--women didn't have careers AND a married life too often in those days. Definitely worth the look, if for nothing else than for a sample of the times.