SoTrumpBelieve Must See Movie...

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Mark Turner Long before there was a healthcare crisis that needed addressed by Obamacare there was...a health care crisis that was never fully addressed. Nearly 40 years before the government took action writer Paddy Chayefsky used it for a satirical film called THE HOSPITAL.George C. Scott stars as Dr. Herbert Bock, a suicidal chief doctor at a busy hospital in New York City. His life a mess, his marriage on the rocks and his desire to tackle the problems of the hospital dwindling leave him a shattered man.When the film opens he's faced with one problem on top of another. The most pressing at the moment is the fact that an intern of the hospital has been found dead in an unoccupied bed in one of the rooms. Herein lies the issue with hospitals at the time, an inability to cope with the influx of patients and to keep up with paperwork.The intern in question was having sex with another staff member in a bed vacated when the patient there passed away. Falling asleep in the bed the night staff had no idea the previous patient had left and gave the sleeping intern the IV that patient was supposed to get killing him. But this is not the only case where this happens. Later on another doctor is found dead in the ER unit, dead from being ignored once his medical issue was diagnosed and he was moved.Bock rages against the way things are being done, both at nurses and at hospital higher ups. In addition to the deaths of two doctors and later a nurse, he must contend with a fellow surgeon whose botched efforts have caused him grief in the past. Dr. Welbeck (Richard Dysart) is more interested in how to make money off of his patients than he is in curing or taking care of them. That's led to numerous screwed up surgeries that Bock and his team have had to cover for.In the middle of all of this Bock meets the daughter of an ex-medical man in a coma in the hospital. Drummond (Barnard Hughes) left medicine behind and went off to study Native Americans in a small Mexican town. His daughter Barbara (Diana Rigg) followed, leaving behind her problematic past life. Now she wants to take him back to that small village rather than leave him there for testing.As Barbara and Bock discuss the situation both open up to one another in his office. She tells him her life story and he in return discusses his lack of interest in what's going on around him, his loss of faith in humanity that has left him battered and bruised emotionally. In the end they sleep together and talk of him running away with her comes up.But there is something afoot in the hospital. In addition to the protests going on outside on the sidewalk as the hospital expands and evicts tenants from the properties they live in, the mix ups in the various departments, the inability to get answers to simple questions like do you have Blue Cross and more, it turns out the mysterious deaths of the staff are anything but natural. A serial killer has apparently found his/her way into the system. Is there any hope for this hospital?While this may not sound like a comedy there are comedic moments in the film. Chayefsky was a master of dialogue and this film puts that front and center. It may not be his best example (for that see NETWORK) but it does show that in the right hands a screenwriter is just as important as the director in some cases. His work here makes the chaotic land of the modern big city hospital as a place of danger as well as of healing seem as real as it can be.Director Arthur Hiller also shows a definite skill here. Known for movies like LOVE STORY, THE OUT OF TOWNERS, THE IN LAWS and SILVER STREAK, this film shows a more acid tongued approach to comedy than some of his other films. In most cases it works but when the film is over you're left thinking that the chances of change are limited at best and unexpected at worst.Scott is always a joy to watch in any film but I honestly felt he was not as keen here as in other films. His character seems to rage too often but when he's reflecting on his life he provides a dynamite performance. Rigg here is underused and shows little of the talent she's displayed in other films and on TV. Dysart is truly slimy here and does the job incredibly well. But it is Chayefsky who shines more than the rest with his writing.Twilight Time is releasing this film on blu-ray and once more has done a great job with the presentation picture wise. Extras are limited to an isolated score and effects track and the original theatrical trailer. They are once more limiting this to just 3,000 copies so if interested make sure you get one right away.

Mr-Fusion "The Hospital" is pretty much what you'd expect from a Paddy Chayefsky movie on healthcare. Its Manhattan Hospital Center is a Gothic horror funhouse in which patients are killed either due to neglect, the wrong diagnosis or any other manner of bureaucratic nightmare. All of this is played to the ridiculous extremes and it makes for some hilarious dark comedy.George C. Scott is the film's fiery main attraction (the man is incomparable, really), and his frustrated character is both energizing and exhausting. And his one-on-one dialogues with Diana Rigg help give this movie its emotional core. But the outlandishness of this hospital is what makes this movie memorable for me. Which honestly isn't supposed to subtract in any way from Scott's contribution (seriously, watch this for him), but there's also Barnard Hughes' tirade in the OR, Mrs. Cushing's badgering of despondent patients for their Blue Cross numbers, and the kind of farcical healthcare environment that really hits a little too close to home, these days.This is riveting absurdity.8/10

nomorefog 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!'

Tom May As David Thomson argues in his unimpeachable Biographical Dictionary of Film, this film is not about Arthur Hiller; his contribution is barely noticeable. It is about screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky and a towering central performance by George C. Scott as Dr Bock, a haunting performance of a conflicted man: a conscientious Doctor embodying the decaying ideals of public service and enlightenment as chaos reigns in his hospital.The film stands on the cusp of the changing times, as the new 'realism' of the 1970s began to be felt: in the cold, harsh light of a new decade, the assumptions of consumer-driven economic growth and a benevolent welfare state came under threat. As prosperity began to dwindle, the divisions of the 1960s between new and old ideas - political and personal - came to the fore in a much less comfortable new context.Chayefsky is even-handed with the new counter-culture; young people - perhaps rightly - protesting at the state of the hospital, but unlikely to be able to assume the sort of responsibility exercised by Dr Bock. Bock is dismayed that so much of the 'revolution' is merely personal - it is not about serious issues like race or even Vietnam, for many of the young, but a sexual revolution: inward looking ("Kids are more hung up on sex than the Victorians"). But then there is the eccentric 'acidhead' Barbara Drummond, played with matter-of-fact charm by Diana Rigg, who just might prove Bock's salvation, in several ways; someone at last with whom he can at last who can have a soul bearing conversation.The film loses some focus, I feel, in the morning after Bock's liaison with Barbara; the killer-at-large business, whilst amusing in a wacky, playing-with-melodrama sense, does not really work as well as the earlier institutional satire and thoughtful characterisation. The character Dr Welbeck (Richard Dysart) comes across as too obvious a bogeyman, although his inclusion is justified by the brilliantly concise verbal assassination he receives from the world-weary Bock (87mins in).The film is best when it explores the lack of responsibility, the passing of the buck; an ailing bureaucracy that kills its patients, with staff agents of what is effectively an institutional virus. This film conveys better than most the melancholy of good intentions being undermined, of obstacles to good work; of the noble vocation of public service in jeopardy. Fans of the justifiably acclaimed media satire "Network" (1976) will appreciate an equally scabrous, truth-telling script by Chayefsky - surely one of the finest, though sadly least prolific, Hollywood scriptwriters. And, the great George C. Scott, superb in "Dr Strangelove" and "Anatomy of a Murder", is even better in this neglected, minor classic of a film.