Customer Reviews

The Hospital

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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

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.

The main draw of this movie is the rare appearance of Dianna Rigg outside Shakespearian theatre after her Avengers run. She is much more sexual in appearance and speech than her role in The Avengers including a low cut outfit and what seems a heavily padded bra.

For the plot to work the hospital is organized in a totally different, suboptimal, way than real hospitals. For instance, in real emergency rooms people are treated first and then at checkout asked for their insurance.

Also for the plot to work totally illogical things have to happen. Not to spoil the movie for you I cannot tell details, but ask yourself on the second viewing how a certain person could gain the knowledge that motivated his conduct.

The movie is 5 stars and one of my all time favorites. However, this DVD has severe framing problems. Within the first 15 minutes, there are three scenes where half of GC Scott's head is chopped off. Luckily, I have the laser disc version and was able to compare them side by side. It's a disgrace how misframed this DVD is. Sometimes it's the bottom of the picture that is severely cropped. The bottom line is that MGM did a sloppy job and everyone that loves this movie should send them a message demanding that a corrected version be reissued.

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. I highly recommend it to healthy people. If you are contemplating hospitalization, perhaps you better wait and see this movie after you return home.

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. I highly recommend it to healthy people. If you are contemplating hospitalization, perhaps you better wait and see this movie after you return home.

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. It was true when it came out, and is even more true now. We are all lost in a Kafkaese maze of numbers and names. It came out in the same year as MASH, and deserves equal standing. MASH must be on TV every other month or so, but I've never seen Hospital at all.

The only other black comedy that stands with it is Dr Strangelove, probably the greatest movie of its type ever made.

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 hospital ineptitude. George C. Scott is his confused, overworked and missunderstood best, Diana Rigg as a fast thinking daughter of a wacked out old man convinced he is the "Paracleet of Kaborka (just what is that anyway?), the Wrath of the Lamb, the Angel of the Bottomless Pit.. etc. etc."
Kudos to the performances of: Barnard Hughes, Nancy Marchand(Lou Grant)and Richard Dysart (St. Elsewhere, LA Law).

And special kudos to Frances Sternhagen.. "Dr Spezio..Dr. Spezio..his chart is not filled out..."

And the best line in the whole film.. "...where do your nurses get their training..Dachau!!!?"

See it, buy it, live it, but don't get sick..who know's what name bracelet you could end up with..

DF

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 pointed no than it was when the film was made. The madcap series of mishaps at the beginning of the film was utterly believable - the stories I could tell! George C. Scott's rant ("We curer nothing!...) is right on. At the end Svott returns to the battlefield. forsaking Diana Rigg. I sent 2 weeks trying to convince myself that I would do no such thing....and failed. The film should be required viewing for all medical studnts.