Nurse Edith Cavell

2099. NURSE EDITH CAVELL (1939-usa). With Anna Neagle, Edna may Oliver, may ROBSON, GEORGE SANDERS, ZASU PITTS, H.B. WARNER. This at once touching and suspense- filled drama is the based-on-fact account of one of the 20th-century’s great heroines. She is nurse Edith Cavell, British-born directoress of a medical institute in Brussels. The time is World War I and Belgium has been conquered by the Hun. As a nurse Edith Cavell has devoted her life to mercy and healing. She quickly comes to learn that war is “a dedication to brutal force,” and that nursing and war are uncompromising foes of each other. Across the Belgian countryside. Allied soldiers have been wounded and are hiding out in barns or ditches and crying out for help. The German policy has been to capture these soldiers and shoot them as spies rather than treat them as prisoners-of-war. As a nurse and a human being, Edith Cavell finds that she cannot ignore this injustice. With stiff- upper-lip determination she goes about organizing an underground network whereby Belgian, British and French soldiers are smuggled to safety outside the country right under the noses of the Germans. Assisting her are some unlikely accomplices. They are a trio of women who might easily be the grandmothers of the soldiers whose lives they are saving. This heartbreaking film about humanism and courage also in its own way served to prepare the world for yet another war against Germany, which was to begin in the year of its release. 97 minutes Historical Drama