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Actors: George C. Scott, Diana Rigg
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| Review Summary and Plot Commentary about The Hospital |
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Five years before "Network," Paddy Chayevsky's screenplay for this equally savage satire (1971) on hospitals was directed by Arthur Hill with George C. Scott starring as Dr. Herbert Bock, the head of surgery at a major teaching hospital in Manhattan. His wife has left him and his children disowned him, and Bock is impotent and suicidal as patients (and even staff!) begin dying off in record numbers due to apparent negligence, errors, and misdiagnoses. Barbara Drummond (Rigg) has come to take her comatose father back to the Sioux reservation to die, and she and Bock reach out to each other for emotional succor as a shadowy figure stalks the patients and staff. The first part of the film seems part melodrama, part horror, but then it veers into black comic farce, though Scott's suicide attempt scene is genuinely wrenching. (Trivia buffs: Stockard Channing's first screen role is here, uncredited, as an ER nurse.)
--David Loftus, Resident Scholar
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| Analysis of The Hospital |
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Time/era of movie:
- 1960's-1970's
Inner struggle or disability
Yes
Struggle with
- (General) search for meaning/identity
Job/Profession/Poverty Story?
Yes
Job:
- doctor
Ethnic/Regional/Gender story?
Yes
Story of city/rural life?
- Big City
Culture of surrounding area:
- American Northeast
Main Character
Identity:
- Male
Profession/status:
- doctor
Age:
- 40's-50's
Hair color?
- brunette (Brown)
Hair type
- (man) short/standard straight
Body type
- (man) muscular
Events of movie makes character more...
- tougher
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
How sensitive is this character?
- sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor?
- Cynical sense of humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- average physique
Secondary Main Character
Identity:
- Female
Hair color
- brunette (Brown)
Hair style
- (woman) medium/shoulderlgn straight
How much in movie?
- 40%
Ethnicity/Nationality
- American Indian
Setting
United States
Yes
The US:
- Northeast
City?
Yes
City:
- New York
- dirty, grimy (like New York)
Style
Accounts of torture and death?
- moderately detailed references to deaths
Movie makes you feel...
- all mixed up
Sex/nudity in movie?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- kissing
- actual description of sex
Any profanity?
- Occasional swearing
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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