#716) The Hospital (1971)

The Plot: Dr. Herbert Bock (George C. Scott) is the Chief of Medicine at a Manhattan teaching hospital who finds himself at a moral crossroads. His hospital is crumbling both literally and figuratively, with overall mismanagement issues, protests from the community, and several staff members mysteriously turning up dead. In addition to these external issues, Bock is privately dealing with the end of his marriage, his suicidal contemplations, his chronic alcoholism, and his impotency. The only bright spot comes from Barbara Drummond (Diana Rigg), the daughter of a comatose patient (Barnard Hughes), who gets Dr. Bock to open up during an intimate late-night conversation. Will Dr. Bock leave the hospital and move to Mexico with Barbara? And are these deaths the work of malpractice or murder? As they say in another movie, “That is one nutty hospital.”

Why It Matters: The NFR praises Arthur Hiller’s balance of “comedy and tragedy, the real and the surreal”, and heralds Chayefsky’s “vision of health care that looks frighteningly prescient.” It’s also worth noting that “The Hospital” entered the NFR one year after the unrelated but similarly titled “Hospital“. Confused yet?

But Does It Really?: I don’t understand this movie or why it’s on the NFR. “The Hospital” has some wonderful dialogue and a great cast, but it never gelled for me the way a film with this pedigree of creatives should. Additionally, “The Hospital” is nowhere near as memorable or impactful as the rest of either Paddy Chayefsky’s or Arthur Hiller’s filmographies, most notably Chayefsky’s other, significantly more iconic middle finger to ’70s decay: “Network“, which wouldn’t make the Registry until 2000. I suspect “The Hospital” is another one of those “you had to be there” movies of the early ’70s that I can never seem to fully comprehend, but even that argument falls through considering this film’s overall absence from pop culture or film discussions in the last 50 years (even “Two-Lane Blacktop” has its share of supporters). As it stands, I’m left scratching my head and wondering how “The Hospital” made the NFR this early in its run, or at all.

Everybody Gets One: Born in Edmonton, Alberta to Polish immigrants, Arthur Hiller started acting in his parents’ Yiddish theater company as a child and was inspired to become a film director after seeing Rossellini’s “Rome, Open City”. Hiller started directing episodic television for the CBC before making the move to America, where he directed episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, “Gunsmoke”, and of all things, the first episode of “The Addams Family”. Hiller’s film career started strong with such films as “The Americanization of Emily” and hit its peak with the 1970 megahit “Love Story”. Arthur Hiller was Paddy Chayefsky’s first choice to direct “The Hospital”, but United Artists insisted on newcomer Michael Ritchie, who was fired during pre-production due to “differences” with Chayefsky and was replaced by Hiller.

Seriously, Oscars?: “The Hospital” received two Oscar nominations, with Paddy Chayefsky winning his second Oscar for its screenplay. Although George C. Scott lost Best Actor to Gene Hackman in “The French Connection“, his nomination is notable for occurring the year after he refused a nomination and eventual win for his work in “Patton“. Clearly the acting branch of the Academy didn’t hold grudges.

Other notes

• After a very successful run as a writer throughout the ’50s (including his first Oscar for “Marty“), Paddy Chayefsky stumbled throughout most of the ’60s. With a string of flop plays on Broadway and unable to get his original screenplays produced in Hollywood, Chayefsky took jobs adapting other people’s work, including “The Americanization of Emily”, which underperformed at the box office, and several projects he was quickly fired from. Inspired by his wife Susan’s recent trip to a hospital (and its less-than-supportive staff), Paddy pitched a TV series set in a hospital to producer Howard Gottfried, which evolved into a film script that represented, as Chayefsky put it, “a microcosm for all the ills of contemporary society”. Chayefsky and Gottfried formed their own production company – Simcha Productions, named for the Hebrew variation of Paddy’s birthname Sidney – to ensure that Chayefsky would have creative control during production and that the final film would match his screenplay.
• The opening prologue about the fates of Mr. Guernsey and Dr. Schaefer in Room 806 sets the film up as a delightful black comedy, which I don’t think the rest of this movie fully delivers on. Part of my problem with this movie is, through no fault of its own, the abundance of quirky hospital media that has come out since this film’s release. I’m sure this film’s depiction of hospital life was more original and outrageous in 1971, but with “St. Elsewhere”, “ER”, “Scrubs”, “Grey’s Anatomy”, etc. none of it seems too out of place nowadays. And yes, that is Paddy Chayefsky as the prologue narrator, a temp recording that found its way into the finished film.
• George C. Scott is, as always, terrific in this, though of his five NFR performances this is the least flashy or memorable. Dr. Bock is such an internal character it doesn’t give Scott much to play with, although we do get one of his trademark rage monologues early on. Side note: Having never seen “The Hospital” before, I was under the impression this was the movie where George C. Scott growls “It is NOT in the file!” to a nurse. Turns out that’s “The Exorcist III”.

• As someone who has seen “Network” dozens of times over the years, I can’t help but notice the similarities. Both are films about a middle-aged man going through a self-described “menopausal” crisis, watching the institution he has devoted his life to deteriorate around him, and taking solace in an intelligent, beautiful, significantly younger woman. Clearly Chayefsky (who was 48 when this film was released) was working out some things in his own writing. Ultimately, I feel like “Network” did everything “The Hospital” is doing, but with a sharper focus in its writing and execution.
• I do love any movie with a murderers’ row of New York stage actors. Among those showing up here in supporting roles: Frances Sternhagen, Nancy Marchand, Katherine Helmond, Roberts Blossom, and, in her uncredited film debut, Stockard Channing. Oh, and apparently Christopher Guest makes his film debut too as one of the resident doctors. Definitely missed that.
• There’s an extended sequence of Mr. Blacktree, an Indigenous associate of Barbara’s, performing a medicine dance over Mr. Drummond’s hospital bed. This scene goes on long enough without anything else happening that I think the joke is the mere sight of a medicine dance, a joke that aged so poorly I didn’t even recognize it as one. This kind of humor always makes me think of that “Simpsons” scene of Homer watching an Indian film with Apu: “It’s funny; their clothes are different from my clothes.”
• In her American film debut, Diana Rigg spends most of the film’s first half standing in the background of other people’s scenes, but once we get the late-night monologues between Dr. Bock and Barbara, she gives a knockout performance. Rigg didn’t make a lot of movies, and as much as I question this film’s NFR standing, I’m glad she’s on the list at least once (though I’m also holding out for “The Great Muppet Caper“).

• Speaking of Diana Rigg: I do love that they explain away her British accent by saying that Barbara went to Vassar. Good stuff.
• I spent a lot of this movie’s second half trying to put my finger on what exactly wasn’t working for me. I was ready to throw Arthur Hiller under the bus and say he couldn’t handle the material, but that notion went out the window once I started doing my research. I haven’t seen a lot of Arthur Hiller’s movies, but his filmography suggests he was one of those chameleon directors who could work in a variety of genres and service the story without putting any distracting “signature directorial style” on it. Plus, he had successfully collaborated with Chayefsky previously on “The Americanization of Emily”, and based on what I know about Chayefsky, getting along with him was no easy task, so being his top choice for director was a huge vote of confidence. As for this film’s NFR induction, I will play a bit of devil’s advocate and point out that Arthur Hiller was a member of the National Film Preservation Board in 1995, the year “The Hospital” made the list. Granted, Hiller is far from the only person to have one of their films inducted while serving on the board, but his presence certainly didn’t hurt.
• Critics at the time were divided over whether the film’s tonal gearshift in the second half works. While I didn’t completely hate it, it didn’t work for me either. For starters, Chayefsky would bring back the sudden spiritual epiphany storyline in “Network”, so it didn’t come as much out of left field for me as it would have for people in 1971. The main issue with this swing into farce is that the first half is filmed too realistically for the later, more satirical elements to work. “The Hospital” is in the grounded world of cinema verité shaky cam, not the polished, larger-than-life environment you need for a successful farce. Also adding to the confusion is Barnard Hughes playing two different characters: Diana Rigg’s father and one of the hospital’s surgeons. These characters have no connection to each other, and very little effort is made to distinguish the two. There’s not even a “wink-wink” acknowledgment of this dual casting within the film. Very weird.