Hospital / Movie [VHS]

Hospital / Movie [VHS]
by Arthur Hiller

Hospital / Movie [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Barnard Hughes, Diana Rigg, George C. Scott, Richard Dysart, Stephen Elliott
Director: Arthur Hiller
Cinematographer: Victor J. Kemper
Editor: Eric Albertson
Producer: Howard Gottfried
Producer: Jack Grossberg
Writer: Paddy Chayefsky
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Original recording reissued
Running Time: 103 minutes
Release Date: 1994-03-02
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)

VHS Movie Reviews of Hospital / Movie [VHS]

Movie Review: TIMELESS STORY
Summary: 5 Stars

This is a story then WELL AHEAD OF ITS TIME! Paddy C has done it again. I am sure he's an Aquarian.
IF ANY MOVIES SHOULD BE REMADE IN THIS NEW DECADE, THE DOCTOR SHOULD BE IT AND SHOULD BE PLAYED OF COURSE BY AL PACINO. PERIOD. MAYBE KEVIN SPACEY OR NIC CAGE...IF THEY DONT' REMAKE IT, IT WILL BE ON MY LIST TO PURSUE.

Movie Review: A horror movie. or blackcomedy/satire if you will.
Summary: 4 Stars

A product of its time, the 60's becoming the 70's. George Scott is the massively depressed Dr Brock. A serial killer is running amuck in the hospital but the hospital is doing a pretty good job of killing patients on it's own. Late one night, Dr. Brock, about to off himself, encounters Diana Rigg, a hippie, whose father is a patient being slowly killed by misdiagnoses. After some lengthy dialouge, Dr. Brock rapes her, thereby taking care of one of his problems: impotence. After more endless blather they determine they are now in love. There is a lot more going on here but I just waited to do a short review. George Scott was in the best phase of his career, winning the A.A. for Patton while this was at the theaters & then being nominated again for this one. For that resaon it's worth a look. A powerful performance.

Movie Review: Echoes of Ivan Illych
Summary: 4 Stars

I just happened to catch this movie late one evening on a local commercial broadcasting network 'movie' channel, not necessarily a great venue for viewing better films of the highest quality. Although quite dated in terms of its time of production (early 1970s), the commentary 'The Hospital' offers is timeless in several contexts.

Ostensibly a story about a dedicated but increasingly cynical physician who heads the clinical services of a major metropolitan teaching hospital, it offers thoughtful reflection on at least three different levels most insightful men can relate to. George C. Scott, a widowed physician named Dr. Bock who is (in the film) in his late 50s or early 60s, has not yet reached what I like to call 'male menopause' (a term modified from the title of UC Santa Cruz professor Page Stegner's 1977 book titled 'Sports Car Menopause') and is still subject to the allure of beautiful young women. He has also grown increasingly frustrated and burned out by the 'modern' high-pressure culture of the American 70s, wherein his teaching hospital has come under substantial demands by 'minority' groups to provide quality health care and concern for their self-perceived 'rights'. Having lost his wife and child in an accident, Dr. Bock has grown increasingly morose and at times near-suicidal. As a dedicated and idealistic physician, he finds his allegience to the medical center increasingly conflicts with his awareness that modern medicine has become corrupted by a culture that places inordinate value on status, money, and personal reward for the medical elite over the higher professional ethics. As a result, he withdraws inwardly, growingly more and more angry over his inability to change the system and/or cope with the burden he has been charged with, turning to alcohol as a paliative source for both his personal and professional frustrations.

Into this setting a new patient is admitted, a former doctor himself (Dr. Drummond), suffering from an apparent coma. The patient has a dynamic, convoluted (and beautiful) young daughter (played by all-time English hottie and stage actress Diana Rigg) who immediately attracts Scott's attention with her smoldering inner depths and youthful sang froid. She quickly makes it clear she has a 'thing' for older, more mature men such as bock who are filled with angst and manages to bring Scott out of his increasing depression by having a passionate sexual relationship with him. Scott, understandably, falls for her nubile sensuality as evidence that he still 'has the right stuff', despite his embittered, raging despair, and regains his determination to live.

As the movie develops, a short time later hospital staff start dying mysteriously, seemingly by accident (it would appear). Scott probes the puzzling deaths and only too late understands that the young woman's father is severely psychicatrically disturbed, after he manages to artfully murder several of the hospital staff (a OBGYN physician and a hemodialysis nurse) while feigning a coma, making the deaths look like accidents. Scott learns from the patient's daughter that his patient (her father) is a highly educated and brilliant former medical scientist whom, after withdrawing from modern culture to live with a tribe of indians in Mexico, has undergone a sort of semi-Luddite transformation and become an antagonist of modern, Western scientific technology, losing his remaining 'sanity' in the process.

Meanwhile, the medical center is reeling under wave after wave of community protests (this was, after all, the early 70s era when protests against the establishment were in full ideological bloom) from urban minorities and Scott is simultaneously trying to cope with colleagues at the center, who are practicing dangerous medicine and getting away with egregious acts of lethal malpractice on a daily basis.

When the impact of all of these chaotic developments finally settles in on Scott, the patient's daughter tries to convince Scott that he needs to escape the hassles and pressures of his present life and come away with her (and her father) to Mexico, back to that idyllic tribal setting she and her father formerly experienced. Scott vacillates, torn severely between escaping to that paradise of simple, uncomplicated rural existence and staying behind at the medical center to continue trying to resolve the catastrophic problems and difficulties the teaching hospital is being torn apart by.

At the last minute, Scott shoulders the noble burden of responsibility and does the proper thing, as he sees it: he helps the young woman and her father escape the authorities and fly off to Mexico, while remaining behind to cope with the extreme difficulties that have threatened to shut down the medical center entirely.

This film had, as mentioned earlier, several attractions for me, a former medical practitioner who cut his medical teeth in that same 70s era, when our society was seething with frustrated idealism characterised by youthful battle against the wrongs of established culture. As a person who worked in a similar metropolitan medical teaching facility and one who had also witnessed the same sort of intense cultural shear forces of that radical era at work, I found the plot of the film quite engrossing and easy to relate to from my perspective of a youthful, idealistic medical professional in the classic Ivan Illych mold (Ivan Illych was, as you may recall, a brilliant socialistic medical economist of the era--GOOGLE the name if you are unfamiliar with his many astute insights into cultural and economic ideology).

Today, at the age of 63, I now find Scott's character immensely believeable and interesting, since I too have not yet reached the point where hot young, idealitic women no longer stir my primal juices, despite my progessive cynicism and cultural pessimisms (the invariable result of age on reflectively intelligent males). I also understand all too well the narrowed choices that older men face, when confronted with the ineluctible truth of the loss of their former dreams and hopes, at the end of their lives and as far from the former firey passions of youth as one may get.

On all these levels, 'The Hospital' succeeds beautifully and it is clearly helped in that achievement by the talented acting of both George C. Scott as Dr. Bock and beautiful, sensually hormonal brunette Diana Rigg (as Barbara). Rigg's 'father' (Bernard Hughes, playing a character named Drummond) is also very good as the brilliant but crazed genius who has finally lost faith (and his mind) over the world's tragic excesses.

Crafted by equally brilliant author & screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, this cinematic tour de force achieves almost everything it sets out to do and remains as compelling a drama today as it was back in 1971, when it initially premiered. Chayefsky was awarded an Oscar for 'Best Screenplay' and Scott only narrowly missed getting a personal Oscar as 'Best Actor' for his role in this film in 1971.

[One last note: If you are a fan of timelessly sexy Diana Rigg, with her dark good looks and sensationally earthy beauty (more well known for her appearances on the English stage and as 'Emma Peel' on the UK TV series 'The Avengers'), you won't want to miss this excellent movie. Before you try to find a VHS copy of it on Amazon for your personal viewing, however, I suggest you do a quick GOOGLE research on Ivan Illych, one of the inspirational sources of medical economic philosophy who partly provided Paddy Chayefsky with the raw material for this scathingly dark satire on the excesses of modern Western medicine. Also recommended is trying to locate a copy of UC Santa Cruz Professor Page Stegner's delightfully amusing and entertaining book 'Sports Car Menopause', since it deliciously explores the challenge of being an aging male who still feels like a teenager underneath all those wrinkles, and burdened by the failed promise of flown youth and failed love.]

Movie Review: outstanding movie
Summary: 5 Stars

this is a must see for all who work in the medical profession....at times cynical...at times serious, and at times
humorous....very good movie

Movie Review: The Hospital
Summary: 4 Stars

I purchased the DVD (The Hospital) with George C. Scott because I enjoyed that film, years ago. It reminded me of the city hospital I attended nursing school in and worked in the 50s & 60s. The disk was absolutly blank and an utter disappointment, call it the blank hospital. I feel cheated. I rate the film itself 4 star, The script about this hospital was almost unbelievable but from my prospective it was so true. I thought perhaps someone that worked with me wrote it. Enjoy it if you get a working DVD.

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Summary of Hospital / Movie [VHS]

Paddy Chayefsky (Marty) wrote the script for this 1971 film that mixes--in Chayefsky tradition--absurdist satire with a touching, almost wistful love story. George C. Scott plays a cynical doctor battling bureaucratic superstructures on the one hand and hippie-dippy flakiness among some patients on the other. When he falls for an eccentric young woman (Diana Rigg) with an alternative view on everything, the road to liberation from burdensome responsibilities seems to open before him. Director Arthur Hiller (Love Story) doesn't do much more than bring the screenplay to life, though he does create a persuasive sense of urban chaos in the setting. Scott gives a good, thoughtful performance. --Tom Keogh

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