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The Hospital
 
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The Hospital

Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | Format: DVD
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)

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Amazon.com Essential Video

Paddy Chayefsky (Marty) wrote the script for this 1971 film that mixes--in Chayefsky tradition--absurdist satire with a touching, almost wistful love story. George C. Scott plays a cynical doctor battling bureaucratic superstructures on the one hand and hippie-dippy flakiness among some patients on the other. When he falls for an eccentric young woman (Diana Rigg) with an alternative view on everything, the road to liberation from burdensome responsibilities seems to open before him. Director Arthur Hiller (Love Story) doesn't do much more than bring the screenplay to life, though he does create a persuasive sense of urban chaos in the setting. Scott gives a good, thoughtful performance. --Tom Keogh

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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews
Schizoid May 4 2004
Format:VHS Tape
Schizophrenic film that can't decide whether it's Playhouse 90 or Airplane!. In one corner are Scott and Chayevsky making with the intense psychological realism and some really powerful moments; in the other is chaotic urban hospital laboring at zany gallows humor with a few scattered laughs. In between is director Hiller hoping for single workable whole. Result is awkward pastiche that doesn't live up to super-rich potential. Film is object lesson in how miscasting of even top-notch talent can produce disappointment. I keep wishing gifted amateurs like Zucker Bros. & Jim Abrams had gotten hold of idea first. Sure, Scott is great actor, but he's so authentic he overwhelms ambient efforts at satire; yes, Chayevsky gets off some good lines, but keeps piling on the prose long after it's peaked out. What the movie really needs are more sight gags and a lot less talky angst. In short, let the visuals carry the message -- something word fiend Chayevsky could never allow. My advice: once hippie chick Rigg starts bragging about Scott's restored virility, switch off, because it's a downhill ride from there.
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The Hospital plus 33 years Jan 29 2004
Format:DVD
Its amazing to look back and view this film again to see how " we made out"!

Well we didnt! "The Hospital" underscores the malaise that was beginning in the early 70,s in hospitals. That malaise has now spread into a full blown epidemic. Today, 2004, the hospital,mostly any hospital is one of the most dangerous places to reside in.

They are unhealthy,replete with staff shortages, racked with mal practice suits, hammered by HMO's subverted by medicare rules and regulations and emeregency rooms that are packed with aliens getting their initial health care!

This film shows how organized mayhem effects health care and converts that to disorginized health care. George C. Scott is totally defeated physician who is rejuvenated by the allure of Diana Rigg( who wouldnt be) Its too late for Scott and many of the patients that fall to DR. Wellbeck's unsteady hands or Bernard Hughes' philosophy.

In the end Scott stays on in his quagmire sort of like a Capt who chooses to go down with his ship.

Unrelenting and terrific film hits all the marks so get ready!

CP

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The Hospital as microcosm of world's problems circa 1971 Oct 13 2003
Format:DVD
Paddy Chayefsky, the screenwriter of "The Hospital," introduces many of the themes here that he will perfect and revisit in 1976's essential film "Network" and his spiritual/psychedelic experiment "Altered States" (1980). "The Hospital," more or less, is about spiritual malaise -- when work can no longer replace sex as a primal drive (to loosely paraphrase one of Freud's maxims) ; when technology and scientific knowledge work to conspire against those it is supposed to help ; when generation gaps form as a result of all these changes. George C. Scott plays Bock, a middle-aged, "male menopausal" suicidal doctor who is trying to figure out where his lust for life is as well as who is killing off his doctors in a Manhattan hospital one by one. Like another classic George C. Scott film, Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove," this is unusually dark terrain even for dark comedy. The cure for Bock's lack of passion comes in the person of Diana Rigg, a mid-twenties spiritual eclectic and acid-head. Ironically, she is presented as a complete space-case, but is the only object that can bring Bock to his central realization -- that he is "middle class" and that for him, love does not conquer all, but, rather, responsibility. Chayefsky shows himself off here to be a master technician, deploying language that would later sound at home in the TV show "ER," as he weaves a skewed realism with his particular brand of post-Marxist social commentary. An odd film, for sure, but definitely worth checking out.
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Most recent customer reviews
The star is successful, but the script dies
Only a volcanic performance by George C. Scott keeps `The Hospital' alive once Paddy Chayefsy's script flatlines. Read more
Published on Mar 20 2004 by jvt8713
unrealistic
The main draw of this movie is the rare appearance of Dianna Rigg outside Shakespearian theatre after her Avengers run. Read more
Published on Sep 28 2003 by it
DVD version is flawed!
The movie is 5 stars and one of my all time favorites. However, this DVD has severe framing problems. Read more
Published on Sep 19 2003 by Danny L Hartley
It is about time that this movie be released on DVD
I originally saw this movie in the theater and have seen it on tape. This is a great black medical comedy, well written, well acted, well produced and great to watch. Read more
Published on Sep 4 2003
It is about time that this movie be released on DVD
I originally saw this movie in the theater and have seen it on tape. This is a great black medical comedy, well written, well acted, well produced and great to watch. Read more
Published on Sep 4 2003
Forgotten essential movie
This movie has been basicly forgotten and ignored by the current generation. I first saw it when I was a junior in medical school, and almost fell out of my chair laughing. Read more
Published on Feb 13 2003 by David L. Schoon
A CURE FOR WHAT AILS YA....
If you ever were scared of hospitals.. DONT SEE THIS MOVIE.. it will only reinforce those fears.. Paddy Chayefsky outdoes himself in this awesome story of bungling, machination and... Read more
Published on July 22 2002 by D. A. Farhie
Medicine
I was a surgical intern at Bellevue Hospital in New York in the early Seventies. This is a marvelous, biting commentary on the state of medical care in America, possibly even more... Read more
Published on Jun 7 2002 by David Rosenblum
Number Two of Paddy Chayefsky's Triple Crown.
This is the 2nd of the three great movies Paddy Chayefsky wrote in the 60's and 70's, starting with The Americanization of Emily and ending with Network, that examined, among other... Read more
Published on May 11 2001 by Archmaker
A ferocious George C. Scott at the top of his game......
Oh how I miss the brilliant words of Paddy Chayefsky, the man who also gave us "Network." This film, like his later satire, skewers American culture without regard for... Read more
Published on May 1 2000 by Brooke276
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