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The Hospital

6.3

385

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Original title

The Hospital

Year

1971

Running time

103 min.

Country

United States

Director

Arthur Hiller

Screenwriter

Paddy Chayefsky

Cast

Music

Morris Surdin

Cinematography

Victor J. Kemper

Producer

United Artists

Genre

Comedy | Black Comedy. Medical

Synopsis

Herbert Block (George C. Scott) is chief of medicine in a major teaching hospital. His wife has left him, he is impotent and his children have both disowned him. He is toying with the idea of suicide when patients begin dying, not from complications, but from the erroneous treatments the Hospital is giving them. People in the wrong beds are given wrong medicines, sent to operating theatres for incorrect surgery, and found in waiting rooms dead of natural causes. Barbara Drummond has come to take her comatose father back to the Souix reservation where he operates a clinic and they each reach out to each other for emotional support, as a shadowy figure stalks the patients and staff of the hospital.

1971: Academy Awards: Best Original Screenplay. Nominated George C. Scott as Best Actor.

Awards: 1971: Oscar Best Original Screenplay. 2 Nominations

1971: Golden Globes: Best Screenplay. 3 Nominations

1971: Writers Guild of America (WGA): Best Original Comedy Screenplay

1972: BAFTA Awards: Best Screenplay. Nominated for Best Actor (George C. Scott)

1972: Berlin Film Festival: Silver Bear - Special Jury Prize, OCIC (Recommendation)

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Critics' reviews

"This blisteringly cynical satire, written by Paddy Chayefsky, is one of the darkest movies ever made, a cold-eyed lament for a society torn apart by upheavals of the Sixties."

Peter Travers: Rolling Stone
"The laughs are sardonic, and the reality of Chayefsky's heavy-handed message (i.e., hospitals treat their patients badly) eats away at the viewer. But even when it falls flat, it's still an interesting watch."

TV Guide
"Although Mr. Chayefsky has written a very contemporary melodramatic farce, his political sympathies have their roots in the liberalism of 20 years ago."

Vincent Canby: The New York Times
"The picture strains for seriousness now and then, but even when it makes a fool of itself it's still funny."

Pauline Kael: The New Yorker
"It starts off with some marvellously cruel moments, and Scott's performance towers over the proceedings throughout. But Hiller's direction is pretty shoddy, while the script eventually loses its way"

Time Out

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User history

The Hospital

1971

Arthur Hiller

6.3

(385)