The Hospital
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The Hospital
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1995.
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The Hospital is a 1971 American absurdist satirical black comedy film directed by Arthur Hiller and starring George C. Scott as Dr. Herbert Bock. It was written by Paddy Chayefsky, who was awarded the 1972 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Chayefsky also narrates the film and was one of the producers; he had complete control over the casting and content of the film.
Why It Rocks
- With the film partially being inspired from Paddy Chayefsky's wife suffering from a painful neurological disorder, and him considering the people treating her "dismissive", the story's meant to serve "as a microcosm for all the ills of contemporary society", specifically being set inside a hospital.
- Arthur Hiller's direction ensured that the film's portrayal of the public health system was bitter and rancid, which Chayefsky had intended the for the film and his vision. Like his later film Network, it exaggerates reality in ways that were satire at the time but has since only become a well-documented reality: the craven administrator drifting through the ER demanding proof of insurance even as the patients can barely speak through their misery, the surgeon who butchers his patients but uses real precision when evading taxes, and the staff that are too tired and overwhelmed to care about they duties. There’s a whole ton of smart insight within the film.
- George C. Scott turns in an incredible performance as Dr. Herbert Bock with his great talent being his sense of rage. One of Dr. Bock's suicidal rants covered six pages of dialogue and took up over three minutes of screen time; Scott nailed it in three takes. It was one of the actor’s last serious film roles, one of the last times on screen that he invested himself fully in a character rather than blustering his way through a part. Dr. Bock's compelling enough as a weather-beaten, revered doctor who is not only going through a mid-life crisis of divorce and impotence, but who is chronically depressed due to the terrible administrative system, but Scott's tragic performance really brings it home and you pity the man.
- Talented well-rounded cast, especially with Diana Rigg plays Barbara, a free-spirited young woman who is intent on taking her crazed father from his sick bed and returning to their hippie lifestyle on an Indian reservation. She has great chemistry with George C. Scott/Dr. Bock.
- The characters are skewered without being reduced to caricatures. The writer's gags are built on who they are, not the point he wants to make. The activists may be portrayed as obnoxious and naïve, but the script shows they've got a point. The script also dramatizes the hospital’s double bind: Give the people affordable housing while keeping the hospital too small to serve the community, or expand the facility, and evict the very people they hope to serve better.
- Frederick Wiseman’s similarly-named 1970 documentary offers a fascinating contrast to Chayefsky’s drama.
- Some of the shots in the two films were almost identical, especially those taken in corridors and in the emergency room. But where Wiseman refused to supply a context for his scenes, or a narration to explain what was happening, Chayefsky provided both.
- Wiseman’s depiction of doctors and their staffs performing heroically despite daunting legal and financial restrictions is a polar opposite of Chayefsky’s world, where doctors and nurses routinely mangle and maim their patients, where accounting is more important than health, and where the outside world is made up of immature protesters who are the voice of a catastrophically ill society.
- Chayefsky’s booze-sodden hero represents the last hope for humanity, a concept typical of the author’s overheated and belligerent view of the world.
- There's an impressive fifteen-minute scene between Dr. Herbert Bock and Barbara in a doctor's office at night that bristles with electricity. In moments like these, the film has an immediacy that is both seductive and persuasive.
Bad Qualities
- The movie has some quick shifts in mood, from thriller to comedy to romance to satire, which will definitely turn some audiences off.
- The screenwriter employed some distasteful narrative strategies, and based on how the people are portrayed here, can come across as a bit misanthropic.
- When Dr. Bock intones that “Someone's got to be responsible” for the “whole wounded madhouse of our times,” it’s hard to avoid the feeling that the audience is being lectured to.
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