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DVD The Hospital
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
"The Hospital" as well-crafted as it is is a wholly unpleasant viewing experience. It is not so much a dark comedy but a mean-spirited one. I was a fan of Paddy Chayefsky's "Network" and at least that film had a little bit of light to compensate for the darkness. I'm led to believe that Chayefsky must have had a bad experience with the medical profession and this resulted in him skewering it as a whole. If George C.Scott's character is supposed to be the voice of reason why is it that when he's not brooding, drinking, or contemplating suicide he's off on some rant? Diana Rigg is completely wasted in this film. Her whole purpose here seems to be to sport a short mini-skirt and be ravaged by Scott's character. The film is also not helped by the lead-footed direction of Arthur Hiller. The medical profession can be lampooned but don't look for it in this uneven tirade of a film.
Important Film -- bad DVD
This is a must-see for 1970s film buffs in particular. Consider it a kind of companion piece to "Network," another Paddy Chayefsky-scripted masterwork that deals with similar themes.
In both, a madman claiming to be on a mission from God takes it upon himself to "cleanse" a corrupted society. Meanwhile, our hero -- a cynical middle-aged man (here played by the amazing George C. Scott) -- struggles to find a purpose in the world as the relationships and institutions he's spent a lifetime building crumble around him.
"The Hospital" works best when it's in black comedy mode. A series of horrible and hilarious hospital mishaps form the backbone of the plot, and rise, by the end of the film, to a crazy crescendo.
For a long spot in the middle, though, Chayefsky and director Arthur Hiller focus on the Scott character's cynical rage, mostly in the form of several long monologues. Brilliant, eloquent writing, yes, but at some point it gets repetitive and, to my mind, indulgent.
Even those spots are worth viewing for Scott's mesmerizing performance though. And as he did with "Network," Chayefsky has created, here, a visionary piece of social commentary. Despite all mankind's medical breakthroughs, Scott screams at one point, "We're sicker than ever!" Given the current health care crisis, "The Hospital" is nothing short of prophetic.
That said, I have to agree with the reviewer, above, that this important film could have been better presented on DVD. The framing is indeed awful -- in one early scene, the characters' heads disappear entirely offscreen. Squeezing the film into wide-screen format also results in the actors appearing "stretched" and elongated. C'mon, MGM. You can do better than this.
You'll be in stitches!
It's a [more vulnerable] Patton in a white coat, running a hospital, and it's all great fun, with a good story from an Oscar-winning script. You have to love it when Scott dresses down a bureaucratic nurse in that gravelly bellow. You half-expect him to finish her off with "There are brave men DYING out there!"
Media madness reigns supreme in screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's scathing satire about the uses and abuses of network television. But while Chayefsky's and director Sidney Lumet's take on television may seem quaint in the age of "reality TV" and Jerry Springer's talk-show fisticuffs, it's every bit as potent now as it was when the film was released in 1976. And because Chayefsky was one of the greatest of all dramatists, his Oscar-winning script about the ratings frenzy at the cost of cultural integrity is a showcase for powerhouse acting by Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight (who each won Oscars), and Oscar nominee William Holden in one of his finest roles. Finch plays a veteran network anchorman who's been fired because of low ratings. His character's response is to announce... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Faye Dunaway - William Holden - Peter Finch Director(s): Sidney Lumet DVD Release Date: Released the 16 May 2000 Usually ships in 6 to 8 days
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William Hurt is perfectly cast as an arrogant surgeon who treats patients like interchangeable cogs in the machinery of his medical practice. Then he is diagnosed with throat cancer and, as the title of the memoir on which it is based tells us, he gets a taste of his own medicine. The subplot involves the solidarity between doctors, which is shattered when the newly conscious physician discovers that one of his partners (Mandy Patinkin) is trying to cover up a case of malpractice. Hurt is solid, as is Wendy Crewson as the doctor who treats him and Elizabeth Perkins as a fellow cancer patient. Interestingly, Hurt's fellow actors Patinkin, Adam Arkin, and Christine Lahti all wound up playing doctors on TV's Chicago Hope. --Marshall FineMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): William Hurt - Christine Lahti - Elizabeth Perkins Director(s): Randa Haines DVD Release Date: Released the 06 April 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Walker (Lee Marvin) strides through Los Angeles with the steel-eyed stare of a stone-cold killer, or perhaps a ghost. Betrayed by his wife and best friend, who gun him down point-blank and leave him for dead after a successful heist, Walker blasts his way up the criminal food chain in a quest for revenge. Did he survive the shooting or return from the grave, or is it all a dying dream? The question is left in the air in John Boorman's modern film noir, a brutal revenge thriller based on Richard Stark's novel The Hunter (remade by Brian Helgeland as Payback), set in the impersonal concrete and steel canyons of Los Angeles and eerily empty cells of Alcatraz. Walker kills without remorse, guided by shadowy "informant" Keenan Wynn, whose own agenda is carefully concealed, and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lee Marvin - Angie Dickinson Director(s): John Boorman DVD Release Date: Released the 05 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This vastly underrated Arthur Penn film from the mid-1970s ranks as one of the era's nastiest and most fascinating pieces of business, a detective story that shuttles back and forth between Hollywood and the Florida Keys, with a plot nearly as complex as Chinatown. Gene Hackman stars as a tired, aging private eye who, as a favor to a friend, agrees to track down a runaway teen. But the case turns out to be something much larger: a smuggling ring of Mayan antiquities. The human impulses get darker and darker and Hackman's character gets pulled in deeper and deeper, even as his own life is falling apart. Ultimately, in one of his best and most unsung performances, Hackman winds up hurting the people he is trying to help. A great cast includes Susan Clark, Jennifer Warren, a young... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Hackman - Jennifer Warren Director(s): Arthur Penn DVD Release Date: Released the 12 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky (Marty) sinks his satirical fangs into this story of an American naval officer (James Garner) selected to be the first victim at the invasion of Normandy. Julie Andrews plays a prim, British war widow who falls for him. Cynical in tone, the story becomes an interesting collision of manipulative interests and renewed life, the same formula that worked so well in Chayefsky's scripts for Network and Hospital. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): James Garner - Julie Andrews - Melvyn Douglas Director(s): Arthur Hiller DVD Release Date: Released the 10 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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