Celebrating National Health?

For one of the odder Opening Ceremony moments, director Danny Boyle, recruited real nurses working for the National Health Service to take part, a tribute to a national institution.

The state-funded NHS provides free health treatment to all Britons, and while grumbling about its perceived slow service is widespread — and planned government reforms are controversial — its egalitarian ethos is a matter of national pride. When Republicans criticized the NHS during debate on President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law, a Twitter campaign in its defense became so popular it crashed the NHS website. Park.

At the same moment, real skydivers appeared as the stadium throbbed to the James Bond theme. And moments after that, the monarch appeared in person, accompanied by her husband, Prince Philip.

Organizers said it was thought to be the first time she has acted on film.

“The queen made herself more accessible than ever before,” Boyle said.

In the stadium, she stood solemnly while a children’s choir serenaded her with “God Save the Queen,” and members of the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force raised the Union Jack.

Boyle sprang another giant surprise and picked seven teenage athletes for the supreme honor of igniting the Olympic cauldron. Together, they touched flaming torches to trumpetlike tubes that spread into a ring of fire.

The flames rose and joined elegantly together to form the cauldron. Fireworks erupted over the stadium to music from Pink Floyd. And with a singalong of “Hey Jude,” Beatle Paul McCartney closed a show that ran 45 minutes beyond its scheduled three hours.

Organizers said the cauldron would be moved Sunday night to the corner of the stadium where a giant bell tolled during the show.

Boyle’s challenge was daunting: To be as memorable as Beijing’s incredible, money-no-object opening ceremony of 2008, the costliest in Olympic history.

“Beijing is something that, in a way, was great to follow,” Boyle said. “You can’t get bigger than Beijing, you know? So that, in a way, kind of liberated us. We thought, ‘Great, OK, good, we’ll try and do something different.’”

The evening started with fighter jets streaming red, white and blue smoke and roaring over the stadium, packed with a buzzing crowd of 60,000 people, at 8:12 p.m. — or 20:12 in the 24hour time observed by Britons.

Boyle, who directed “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Trainspotting,” had a ball with his favored medium, mixing filmed passages with live action in the stadium to hypnotic effect, with 15,000 volunteers taking part in the show. Headlong rushes of movie images took spectators on wondrous, heart-racing voyages through everything British: a cricket match, the London Tube and the roaring, abundant seas that buffet and protect this island nation.

Opening the ceremony, children popped balloons with each number from 10 to 1, leading a countdown that climaxed with Bradley Wiggins, the newly crowned Tour de France champion.

Wearing his yellow winner’s jersey, Wiggins rang a 23-ton Olympic Bell from the same London foundry that made Big Ben and Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell. Its thunderous chime was a nod to the British tradition of pealing bells to celebrate the end of war and the crowning of kings and queens, and now for the opening of a 17-day festival of sports — London’s record third as host.

The show then shifted to a portrayal of idyllic rural Britain — a place of meadows, farms, sport on village greens, picnics and Winnie-the-Pooh. But that “green and pleasant land,” to quote poet William Blake, then took a darker, grittier turn.

The set was literally torn asunder, the hedgerows and farm fences carried away, as Boyle shifted to the industrial transformation that revolutionized Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. Belching chimneys rose where only moments earlier sheep had trod.

The Industrial Revolution also produced terrifying weapons, and Boyle built a moment of hush into his show to honor those killed in war.

The parade of nations featured most of the roughly 10,500 athletes — some stayed away to save their strength for competition — marching behind the flags of the 204 nations taking part. Prince William and his wife, Kate, joined in thunderous applause that greeted the British team, and a helicopter showered the athletes and stadium with 7 billion tiny pieces of paper — one for each person on Earth.

Both Bahrain and Brunei featured female flagbearers in what has been called the Olympics’ Year of the Woman. Three Saudi women marching behind the men in their delegation flashed victory signs with their fingers.

“This is a major boost for gender equality,” said the International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge, marking his last games as head of the IOC after completing the maximum two terms.

Rogge appealed to the thousands of athletes assembled before him for fair play. “Character counts far more than medals,” Rogge said.