The film follows five very different student nurses during their first year of training at a fictional NHS hospital in London called St. Augustine's Hospital, where they live in a dormitory. However, of the five, the main focus is Susan.
Susan is reserved and rather naive; Pat is older and rather cynical; Maureen is Irish; Ann is a former public school girl; and Liz comes from a working class background. As they get to know each other, they bond in the face of the challenges of their work.
Susan falls in love with Dr Jim Alcott. She is tempted to leave nursing to go with Jim to Canada despite his reluctance, and manages to persuade him, but after helping a patient who tried to commit suicide, she then decides not to go. However, after a talk with the matron, who reveals something from her own experience, she decides she will join Jim in going to Canada.
When it emerges that Pat stayed out all night with one of the doctors, she faces instant dismissal, until she reveals that she has been married for a month. Although that is also against the rules, Susan and the other nurses protest to the matron that that is morally better than unmarried nurses sneaking out and having clandestine affairs. Matron sympathises but says the final decision is up to the hospital's Board of Governors.
The film was based on the 1950 book The Lamp is Heavy by Canadian Sheila Russell, who worked as a nurse in Edmonton, Alberta[2] and married a doctor in 1947. The novel was published in the Commonwealth in 1954[3] and sold 75,000 copies over five years.[4] "I'm not surprised that there is a change in title", said Russell. "After all, in England the 'lamp' is still pretty heavy for nurses."[5]
It was the first Ealing movie directed by Pat Jackson, who had made an earlier film about nursing, White Corridors (1951). It was one of the last pair of films made at Ealing Studios, which had been sold to the BBC, and one of the last Ealing movies under the nine-year relationship between Rank and Ealing. (Ealing would move to MGM studios, make several more movies, then be wound up.)[7][8][9]
It was the last feature film to be shot in three-strip Technicolor, utilising Technicolor camera DE13, one of a batch of Technicolor cameras built in the UK by Newall Engineering.[10]
It was an early star role for Belinda Lee,[11] one of several "sensible girl" parts she played for Rank.[12]
Film rights were bought by Rank in early 1955. Filming began in late June 1955 at Pinewood Studios[13] and on location at Guy's Hospital.
Reception
Variety called the film "worthwhile, and as a piece of romantic entertainment, it is more than adequate. Pic has valuable exploitation angles which should help returns in the domestic market ... yarn has few comedy touches as well as strong dramatic angles ... Cast is competent .without being standout. Miss Lee, a handsome blonde, is rapidly improving as an actress."[14]
The Monthly Film Bulletin said "this latest example of nurse recruitment by film adds little to what has been said by previous productions of this kind."[15]
^"Girls in blue". The Daily Telegraph. Vol. XIX, no. 203. New South Wales, Australia. 13 November 1954. p. 8. Retrieved 4 August 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Six Titles of Interest in the Field of Current Fiction: Nightingales Hen Medic Rural Alcoholic Troubled Village Death-Wish C.O., Muddled". New York Times. 2 July 1950. p. BR7.
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