Britannia Hospital is a 1982 feature film by British director Lindsay Anderson. A black comedy, it targets the National Health Service, and by extension, contemporary Britain. It was entered into the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.[1]
Plot summary
The story involves the opening of a new wing at Britannia Hospital. The Queen Mother (referred to as HRH) is due to arrive, and the administrator, Potter (Leonard Rossiter) is confronted with demonstrators protesting against an African dictator who is a VIP patient, striking ancillary workers (opposed to the exotic gastronomic demands of the hospital's private patients) and a less-than-cooperative Professor Millar Graham Crowden, the head of the new wing.
Rather than cancel the royal visit, Potter decides to go out and reason with the protestors. He strikes a deal with the protest leader — the private patients of Britannia Hospital are to be ejected and, in return, the protestors allow a number of ambulances into the hospital. However, unbeknown to the protestors, these ambulances actually contain the Queen Mother and her entourage.
Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) is now a reporter and is shooting a clandestine documentary about Britannia Hospital and its dubious practices. He manages to get into the hospital and starts to investigate Millar's sinister scientific experimentation, including the murder of a patient Macready (Alan Bates). As mayhem ensues outside Travis is also murdered and his head used as part of a grim Frankenstein-like experiment which goes hideously wrong. However Millar quietens the protestors and invites them to witness the demonstration of his Genesis Project, in which he claims he has perfected mankind. In front of the assembled audience of Royalty and commoners, Genesis is revealed — a brain wired to machinery. Genesis is given a chance to speak and, in a robotic voice, utters the "What a piece of work is a man" speech from Hamlet, until it continuously repeats the line "And how like a God".
Background
The film forms the third in a loose trilogy of films by Anderson, written by David Sherwin and featuring Malcolm McDowell as the rebellious schoolboy-everyman Mick Travis from if.... and O Lucky Man!, although in this film he is not a central character.
"The absurdities of human behaviour as we move into the Twenty-first Century are too extreme — and too dangerous — to permit us the luxury of sentimentalism or tears. But by looking at humanity objectively and without indulgence, we may hope to save it. Laughter can help." Lindsay Anderson
Britannia Hospital, an allegory for what was transpiring in England at the time, was released in 1982, and is the final part of Lindsay Anderson's critically acclaimed trilogy of films that follow the adventures of Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) as he travels through a strange and sometimes surreal Britain. From his days at boarding school in if.... (1968) to his journey from coffee salesman to film star in O Lucky Man! (1972), Travis' adventures finally come to an end in Britannia Hospital which sees Mick as an investigative reporter investigating the bizarre activities of Professor Miller, played by Graham Crowden, whom he had had a run in with in O Lucky Man.
All three films have recurring characters from each. Some of the characters from if...., that didn't turn up in O Lucky Man, returned for Britannia Hospital.
Britannia Hospital took a number of years to set up. It was originally called Memorial Hospital, and according to David Sherwin's diaries Going Mad in Hollywood, was going to be financed by 20th Century Fox under Sherry Lansing. The Fox deal fell through but the project was then saved by producer Clive Parsons who managed to set-up financing through EMI under Barry Spikings.
Unfortunately Britannia Hospital was a box-office failure. The film was lambasted by the English critics on release, although Dilys Powell listed it as one of the films of the year. Britannia Hospital was withdrawn by EMI a month after its release. Critic Ian Haydn Smith considers Britannia Hospital the "nadir" of Anderson's career. "Replacing satire with broad comedy, the film fails on every level in its attempt to critique the state of the National Health Service".[2]
It has since been widely available on both video and DVD.
Cast (partial list)
External links
References
1. Going Mad in Hollywood; Sherwin, David, Andre Deutsh Limited 1996
