Themes: Fighting the System, Doctors and Patients, Midlife Crises
Main Cast: Rehn Scofield, George C. Scott, Diana Rigg, Barnard Hughes, Nancy Marchand, Stephen Elliott
Release Year: 1971
Country: US
Run Time: 103 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Directed by Arthur Hiller from the second of three Academy Award-winning screenplays by Paddy Chayefsky, The Hospital is a black comedy centering on Dr. Herbert Bock (George C. Scott), a bitter, suicidal surgeon. While patients at the hospital die left and right due to the extreme carelessness and ineptness of the staff that surrounds him, the lonely Bock finds himself falling for Barbara (Diana Rigg), the daughter of Edmund (Barnard Hughes), a patient. Meanwhile, a mysterious killer has begun stalking the hospital, taking out staff members. In addition to Chayefsky's Oscar win, The Hospital garnered a Best Actor nomination for Scott, who lost to Gene Hackman for The French Connection. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
Review
A piece of early '70s social commentary and a de facto warm-up for Network (1976), writer Paddy Chayefsky takes on the medical system in The Hospital (1971). Devised as a satire that could later pass for social realism in an HMO-ruled culture, the matter-of-fact pre-credits voice-over accounting how medical malfeasance resulted in an empty bed for a sexual tryst caustically sets the tone for what follows. Bureaucracy, publicity-hungry "radical" protesters, murders, overcrowding, and sloppy medicine are but a few of the problems that push George C. Scott's honorable Dr. Bock to the suicidal edge. Hippie Diana Rigg's invitation to flee south of the border actually makes sense. Bock's death wish illuminates the genuine pathos and hopelessness caused by the systemic breakdown, but the near-slapstick climax and final cynical summation by Bock's colleague inject bitter levity into the drama. Coming off his blockbuster success with Love Story (1970), director Arthur Hiller earned artistic kudos and a prize at the Berlin Film Festival for The Hospital. Dr. Bock's despair, passion, and resignation earned recalcitrant Oscar-winner Scott another nomination for Best Actor. Chayefsky himself won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, an award he would win again for Network's satirical attack of TV culture. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Donald Harron - Hospital Executive; Lenny Baker - Dr. Schaefer; Roberts Blossom - Hospital Victim; Jacqueline Brookes - Dr. Immelman; Stockard Channing; Jordan Charney - Hitchcock; Alex Colon - Young Lord; Lorrie Davis - Nurse Divine; Andrew Duncan - William Mead; Richard Dysart - Dr. Welbeck; Julie Garfield - Nurse Perez; Richard Hamilton - Dr. Ronald Casey; Kate Harrington - Nurse Dunne; Katherine Helmond - Marilyn Mead; Bette Henritze - Operating Room Nurse; Teresa Hughes - Mrs. Donovan; Nancy MacKay - Sheilah; Paul Mace - Intern Ambler; Angie Ortega - Drummond's Victim; Lou Polan - Dr. Lagerman; Tom Spratley - Mitgang; Frances Sternhagen - Mrs. Cushing; Robert Walden - Young Doctor; Christopher Guest - Resident; David Hooks - Psychiatrist; Robert Anthony - Dr. Ives; Cynthia Belgrave - Nurse Reardon; Rehn Scofield - Dr. Spezio
Credit
Frank Thompson - Costume Designer, Peter R. Scoppa - First Assistant Director, Arthur Hiller - Director, Eric Albertson - Editor, Yossif Surchadijev - Composer (Music Score), Vincent Callaghan - Makeup, Gene Rudolf - Production Designer, Victor J. Kemper - Cinematographer, Howard Gottfried - Producer, Jack Grossberg - Producer, Herb Mulligan - Set Designer, Dennis L. Maitland - Sound/Sound Designer, Paddy Chayefsky - Screenwriter
The Hospital is a 1971black comedy film directed by Arthur Hiller and starring George C. Scott as Dr. Herbert Bock. The script was written by Paddy Chayefsky, who was awarded the 1972 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (at that time qualified as "Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced").
The film tells the story of life in a teaching hospital in Manhattan and centers around Dr Bock (George C Scott), the Chief of Medicine, his life is in disarray, his wife has left him, his children don't talk to him and his once beloved teaching hospital is falling apart.
Meanwhile the teaching hospital suffers from a number of bizarre deaths among both the doctors and staff of the hospital, all of which help to drive Dr Bock even closer to the edge of insanity.
As Dr Bock teeters on the brink of a nervous breakdown, he falls for a patient's seductively charming daughter (Diana Rigg), who not only gives him something to live for, but may be the one person who can help him to turn his life around and give his life some kind of purpose.
Awards
It won the Oscar, the Golden Globe, the WGA and the BAFTA for Best Screen-play for Chayefsky's script. Scott, not withstanding his rejection of the Oscar he was voted the previous year for Patton, was nominated for Best Actor, but the gold statuette went to Gene Hackman for The French Connection.
In 1995, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
