The Hospital (1971)

Very Cool!!!

Really Surprised!

good back-story, and good acting

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Herbert Bock (George C. Scott) is chief of medicine in a Manhattan teaching hospital. His wife has left him. His son is a malcontent communist and his daughter is a delinquent drug dealer. His hospital is a chaotic mess. The latest being the death of Dr. Schaefer. After killing a patient with negligence, he finds a use with the empty bed and a nurse. The next morning, he is dead stuck with an IV. It seems to be a series of bad errors. The hospital is also facing a protest from the apartment residents next door who are about to lose their home to the hospital. There seems to be a killer on the loose in the hospital. Bock finds some relief from his suicidal thoughts when he falls for a patient's daughter Barbara Drummond (Diana Rigg).The Paddy Chayefsky script is sharp rapid-fire medical jargon and a biting skewering of modern medicine. The dysfunction is funny. The tone does keep changing with the serial killer storyline. This reminds me of other hospital TV dramas like St. Elsewhere. George C. Scott delivers some powerful work. The scattering of characters can be confusing which fits very nicely with the confusing nature of the hospital.

This is another unsung gem that I was sure nobody else knew about except for me. I had read about it previously, before actually being able to watch it on ex-rental. 'The Hospital' was the brainchild of Paddy Chayevsky, a legendary television and movie writer specialising in realistic character studies of ordinary struggling working class people. Chayevesky had a couple of near misses in his work for movies before being successful in that medium with 'The Hospital'. 'The Hospital' seems like a dress rehearsal for the better known 'Network', which Chayevsky also wrote, but left the directing chores to someone who had the relevant experience, as with Arthur Hiller for this film. 'Network' has been, at least in the past, far better known than 'The Hospital'. Both were critically acclaimed, but I can only assume that 'The Hospital' has only gained the audience it enjoys today because of cable, video and DVD.The story concerns a hospital situated in an unnamed American city that is having difficulty coping with the demands of its patients. An equally frustrated and put-upon administrator who is meant to be running the institution, played by George C Scott is also struggling with a number of insurmountable personal problems. These include being out of love with his wife and not getting on with his children who prefer the hippie lifestyle to being middle class like their doctor father.In a couple of hilariously memorable set pieces, especially at the beginning, it is obvious that not only is the hospital over-crowded and understaffed, it is in reality, in a state of complete chaos as reflected by the film's delightfully long-winded and crazy plot. It transpires that there is a maniac stalking and killing the staff members and patients. By the end of the film the culprit is revealed to be the father of Scott's love interest, a very young and striking Diana Rigg. The culprit is however an old man who has almost been killed by the incompetence going on at the hospital. He is therefore exacting a bit of revenge for himself as well as the other patients whom he believes have been robbed of their 'vestigal identity' by an anonymous and uncaring institution that is in actual fact, not the slightest bit concerned with their wellbeing. Naturally the poor man is a religious zealot and mad, but his reasons for doing what he does is made to make perfect sense and the symmetry and logic of the writing is hilarious and very sobering. It's a lot of good clean adult fun, trying to keep track of the doctors and nurses that Rigg's father is knocking off until it becomes necessary that his daughter take him back to Mexico where they originally came from, so he won't be either tried for murder or put away for good.George C Scott, pre-eminently a stage actor has been provided with one of his better movie roles here and is always a riveting presence. Diana Rigg, whom I doubt was in another Hollywood movie after this acquits herself admirably and Barnard Hughes plays a very unlikely villain but he is sympathetic and understandable and brings a wonderful sense of reality to the character. Familiar faces from 70's television also have a number of speaking parts among them Katherine Helmond. I really love 'The Hospital' and I'm glad I'm not alone. The film has a rare gallows humour to be treasured and is a piece of intelligent and satirical filmmaking that is rare and highly recommended. 'I am the paraclete of keborka, the wrath of the lamb!'

"The Hospital" is a 1971 satire written by Paddy Chayefsky, and while it contains a slew of original ideas and creative plot lines, it never gels or forms one cohesive story or film.It's easy to see the similarities between this movie and Chayefsky's "Network:" he clearly did extensive research on his subjects, creating bold characters that embodied the best and worst of their respective industry, and while his satirical plot lines were mostly reality-based, he had no problem exaggerating or taking a fantastic turn in order to drive his points home or resolve his characters' stories. In "Network," this formula succeeds brilliantly, as Peter Finch's madman-prophet is just the sort of phenomenon that might be embraced by the viewing public and the TV industry. (There's even a "Network" reference as George C. Scott opens the window and shouts out to the world outside.)In "Hospital" the plot lines are just too bizarre. An Indian doing a healing dance over a comatose man's bed... a serial killer who murders doctors because it's "God's will"... an impotent hospital administrator who is "cured" by raping a hippie chick... ethnic victims who protest and storm the hospital... it's too much. Had Chayefsky streamlined his story and condensed his list of targets the movie might have been more organic, more believable. As it is we're given so many unrealistic scenes in a row that there's no foothold, no chance to catch your breath and ground the proceedings.George C. Scott is great as the tormented, impotent doctor, but his dialogue becomes so heavy and deliberate he loses all credibility. Once the sultry Diana Rigg appears, (who owed us at least one topless shot) the movie forgets it's a satire of the medical industry and becomes a cockeyed, unconvincing love story with no clear motivations for any of the characters. Rigg's father is this film's madman-prophet, but he loses all credibility when we learn he's killed multiple people- murderers lose the right to make a point, even in the movies.This is a script that needed a rewrite from a neutral party, and a reminder of why the director- and not the screenwriter- should be the ultimate author of a film. Chayefsky is so busy forcing dialogue and back-story into Scott & Rigg's mouth that he never allows the characters to Breathe, or to demonstrate who they are not by what they Say but by what they Do, which is a key to good screen writing and filmmaking. To see Paddy Chayefsky at his most brilliant, watch "Network." To see him wielding too much power and missing his own point, watch "The Hospital." It might have been brilliant.GRADE: C+

The Hospital is a movie that was made ahead of its time. This film, produced by screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, who gave us the Oscar-Winning film, "Network", deals with overworked staff, gross incompetence, and bureaucratic corruption at a large conglomerate hospital in Manhattan. George C. Scott, in a superb performance as the head physician, is driven to alcoholism and a death-wish, as he tries to recover from a divorce, throwing his son out of the house, and worst of all, a medical facility where corruption and incompetence take precedence over caring and healing of the sick and injured.Mr. Scott makes the movie his own, and viewers will be shocked at what they observe at this medical establishment. You can feel the "pain" (pun intended) of what this hospital has done to him. The vivid images of this hospital's incompetence are so vivid and dramatically powerful that you may find yourself laughing and being deeply disturbed from scene to scene.If only the film had stayed with that premise in a documentary style fashion as it starts out, this picture would be brilliant. Unfortunately, there is a sub-plot of Scott falling for the daughter of a senile patient. The patient has been murdering people at the hospital. This is where credibility of the picture becomes strained. The romantic dialog scenes add nothing to the picture, and the mental patient, posing as a doctor, I found to be totally unbelievable. A simple security call and records check should have prevented the senile patient from doing the killings. It takes almost the whole movie, before security people are brought into the film to get the patient out of the hospital. I could not see ONE PERSON doing that much damage, even as corrupt as this hospital is.Furthermore, George C Scott's character is "overworked" (another pun intended) because the script has too many things happening at once. For example, within a period of 20 minutes, you could have as many as 20 different doctors accused and denying what they should have done or didn't do. With the nurses and aids, it's the same story. Someone's chart was read wrong, someone was given the wrong medication and died, the doctor operated on the wrong patient, than another doctor does the same thing, blaming a third nurse who was not on call because the second nurse who was supposed to be admitting the patient was on her coffee break. There is also a lot of subtle, dark humor with the same messages of incompetence and corruption being fed to the viewer.This repetition of medical ineptness is unforgettable. However, the murder subplot is a distraction more than a help to this movie. When the focus of this film is on the incompetence of the staff and Scott's reactions to this, you are glued to the screen. But the conversations between Scott and the mad patient's daughter force the film into a mystery type "Who Done it?" scenario that seriously hurts the quality of the movie. When the loony patient is revealing how he did the killings, I wondered the following: Why did the producers need the "find the killer" mad-patient sub-plot? I think the only point of Scott's character having a relationship with the senile patient's daughter, was to give him anybody with whom to communicate. The Hospital should have maintained its scathing indictment of the medical profession by removing the love-interest and mad patient scenes. It should have focused on the incompetent B.S within its walls more frequently. In an era where this movie could have been phenomenal, the sub-plot stories make the film very good instead of the great masterpiece it could have been.