NURSE EDITH CAVELL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 31, 26 January 1940, Page 34

NURSE EDITH CAVELL

(RKO Radio) Circumstances have made Nurse Edith Cavell a more important film than it intrinsically is. At the same time, they have made impartial appraisement of it very difficult. In the light of a new war, this story of one of the most famous tragedies of the last one acquires a meaning which even its producer (Herbert Wilcox), cannot himself have intended, since he finished making the film some time before Great War II. broke out. Indeed, according to Time, this new film of the Cavell story-there were others in 1918 and 1928-was designed as the "appeasement or Munich version," rather than as an occasion for re-opening old wounds. But now, most people’s view of it will be coloured by current events, and they will see it chiefly as a devastating indictment of Germany, all the more effective because of its studied air of understatement. Viewed as dispassionately as possible, and solely as screen entertainment, Nurse Edith Cavell is a _ thoroughly worthy effort. It is, in fact, almost overpowering in its worthiness, and to that extent it lacks entertainment. Whether it is true or not, there is a story which illustrates this point: it is said that one member of the firing squad detailed to execute Nurse Cavell-a German private named Rammler — refused to carry out the officer’s command, and himself followed Nurse Cavell before his comrade’s guns. When it came to making the picture, however, Producer Wilcox rejected this incident as being too melodramatic, with the result that on the screen Nurse Cavell dies alone. An American producer would probably have inserted that incident for sake of colour and "human interest"; but even though he made his film in

Hollywood, Wilcox has kept absolutely clear of the Hollywood atmosphere. His production is a painstaking and minutely authenticated document of Nurse Caveli’s life and death, showing how, after helping one Belgian boy to escape the German invaders, she became more and more involved in such efforts, until finally she was the head of a large-scale organisation for assisting the escape of prisoners-of-war and civilians from Belgium. The film stresses her devotion to duty and humanitarianism; but even when it records her arrest, trial and execution, the indictment is directed at the German military machine rather than. at the men who worked it. They are as dutiful to their own code of behaviour as she is to hers, inhuman though their code must appear. Some of the Germans are shown as kindly men who would have acted differently if they could. Indeed, it is a rather notable fact that the German character who looks most like the traditional screen "Hun" is the very one who behaves most like a human being. In the role of Nurse Cavell, Anna Neagle is as serene and dignified as you would expect an actress to be who has twice played the part of Queen Victoria.. Her conscientious performance is typical of the whole picture.