aramis-112-804880 This is the sort of production I grew up seeing, and that made me wary. However, the story of Florence Nightingale ("the lady with the lamp") and her reform of nursing is a story worthy of telling; and this movie is presented in a moving way.First of all, to the carpers. Sure, there are differences. In 1985 they could not on network television depict the true horrors of the "hospital" in Crimea as Florence Nightingale found it. I'm just a bit squeamish and even though I knew the wounds and burns were makeup I fast forwarded through those scenes. And a simple comparison between photos of the real Florence Nightingale and Jaclyn Smith, queen of the television movies at the time, make the differences obvious enough. Florence Nightingale was a genuine hero in the realm of hygiene, cleanliness and nursing, but hardly a Charlie's Angel. Smith is not as glamorous as usual, but she's still made up and lovely.But you're a dope if you get your history from movies. Movies have to have heroes and villains, good guys and bad guys. History is neutral. It simply is, and is depicted well or badly.Supporting Smith is a powerhouse cast, but not, unfortunately, a deep one. It features a James Bond (Timothy Dalton, who also does the offscreen narration) and Jeremy Brett, television's preeminent Sherlock Holmes. Always a cagey actor, Brett delights the aficionado with familiar flashes of Holmes. Also in the cast are the always welcome Timothy West, in a blink-and-you'll miss him role as the journalist who gave Florence Nightingale her sobriquet; and "Downton Abbey" producer Julian Fellowes.Unwelcome to some will be the persistent Christian imagery. However, as a practicing Christian (one is never perfect) I welcome setting Florence Nightingale in her proper context. After all, she did receive a call from God to follow the calling of serving others through nursing, and that sort of thing gets you written off as a right-wing fundamentalist lunatic these days. This movie does not back away from Florence Nightingale's strong faith, and not in herself but in God. Commendable.I'm an easy mark for movie-makers. I once cried at an episode of "Love, American Style." But I found this movie extraordinarily moving, which is a rare thing to say about a television movie.Is it absolutely one hundred percent accurate? Certainly not. But one of my favorite movies is "Amadeus" and there's hardly a word of truth in it. "Shakespeare in Love" won the Oscar and it's a load of codswollop. "Florence Nightingale" tries to tell this story as accurately as is possible in 140 minutes, but it takes a lot of shortcuts. Still, if you don't want to read a genuine historical tome, this movie will give you the general outline. Worth a look in.

barbara-76 Like many older Englishwomen, I grew up with the story of Florence. And the one thing this movie does is strike me as distinctly unrealistic.There is, of course, some truth in the story itself, although even that is prettified. However the production values are simply ridiculous. Everything is too neat, too clean, too pretty. To include white lace on Florence's costume - and, for that matter, mascara on her face and clean white sheets on her bed - is simply nonsensical. Even the very wealthy with countless servants in those days were lucky to have such luxury. Florence was a desperately hard working and very practical woman in the middle of a war zone with no luxuries whatsoever; her primary battle was to obtain beds for her patients, preferably ones away from cess pits, rather than keep her lace spotless.

DKosty123 It is difficult to put the entire story of a legend of History on any screen. Television makes it even more difficult with the size & time & budget constrictions put upon that production. This is a good effort to do it, but only a piece of the story.Jaclyn Smith is an appropriate person to play Florence Nightingale here in a story which brings across a story of her not often told. It gets past the legend and presents one facet of her own inner conflict. That story is of Nightingale choosing the path she believed God intended for her over the other path of becoming a rich married woman with a family. God intends for her to be a healer as this story goes. Considering actual events, she chose wisely putting others before herself.She spurns the love and marriage of Timothy Dalton's nobleman, and winds up in the British-Russian war of 1855 becoming a Saint. She is presented here as one of the early women pushing women's rights more than a century before a modern movement in the 1960's & 70's would finally breach that wall, more than 50 years before women ever could even vote in the US.The performance of Jeremy Brett & Claire Bloom which are more intrinsic than Dalton after the first half of the film are grand and the scenery is well done. The one reflection that you get it was made for television is you can sense where the commercial breaks are when watching the DVD. Glad it was brought to this version, as this is too long & commercials would take away some of the wallop. It is a little weak in the second half after Dalton is gone, but still a good effort overall.

Mark Krasselt The life of Florence Nightingale--one of the great intellectual titans this world has ever known--is fascinating and dramatic, and one fraught with sacrifice, courage, and great sadness.As someone who spent two years with the subject through research and by writing and completing a full-length spec script on Nightingale (written and registered before NBC's TV movie was available on DVD), I viewed this film more as series of missed opportunities and plodding digressions, distinguished more by what the left out or glossed over or ill- advisedly reinvented than by what they left in. Overall, the teleplay was fine for what is was up until the point Florence arrives in the Crimea. Once in Turkey, however, the biopic simply falls flat on it face, finding little drama and even less resolution. While I completely understand that not every nuance of history can be examined and budgetary constraints determined structure and style, the teleplay failed to capture even the essence of any real tension vs. resolution. Everything just neatly fell into place while real life and real history is far messier.For instance, watching the movie, one is left with the feeling that while FN's mother may have had some disagreement with her choice in career, she was generally okay with it. In fact, their arguments were frequent and very loud--a veritable boxing match that was constant and damaging. Florence rather despised her mother and the matronly traditions she stood for.Florence herself did not make a connection between the sickness of her men and the "sickness" of Barracks Hospital. In fact, Florence, or the British Army, did not understand (or believe) that airborne or water-borne diseases existed, hence no alarm was made by the decaying carcasses contaminating the water supply.While the teleplay did mention that God was her inspiration and that he "spoke" to her, the film leads you to believe He did this on this one time. In fact, her writings reveal a deep and unbridled relationship with God and many incidents of "conversation", the most dramatic one being on her 30th birthday after a particularly mystical trip to Egypt and Greece. Florence's struggle with the meaning and message of her belief in the Divine mandate is one of the key--some would say flaw, others would say divinely sacrificial--aspects of her character that is the hardest to digest and/or dramatize.In the 20 years since the teleplay, there have been several major works published on her life and times, and these have aided immeasurably in our understanding of the complex nature of Florence Nightingale. And I don't want to mistakenly fault the teleplay for not having the benefit of future research. History changes as events reveal themselves over the blanket of time.Yet, the drama failed to exploit the information it had on hand at the moment to any large degree, taking a middle of the road stance based more on mythology than real life. It did further injustice by embellishing the myth even more with Hollywood half-truths. And it could be that the complexity of her life is too difficult for any one film to examine. Many are mystified by her, as she both mesmerized and infuriated people all at the same time--perhaps herself most of all. She is both scion and Saint, linguist and mathematician, prolific researcher and writer, a mystic, a healer, and beacon of hope to generations, a national heroine.When you are all that, where is there room for the "real" you?