Rating: 
Summary: Quack,Quack!
Review: "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.
Rating: 
Summary: CULT MOVIES 36
Review: 36. THE HOSPITAL (comedy, 1971) A series of emergencies has gripped NY's Manhattan Hospital. Patients are dying left and right due to overcrowded conditions, and the staff's ineptitude when dealing with them. When a resident doctor is caught up in the death count the chief medical examiner, Dr. Bock (George C. Scott), is called in to investigate. Having worked as a doctor for too many years, and having family problems of his own, Dr. Bock finds it difficult to deal with everything else. He decides to commit suicide. But then he meets Barbara (Diana Rigg), a young-hippie beauty, who's mentally ill father she wants to take home. Her perceptive insights on life makes Dr. Bock fall in love with her, thus reexamining his life.Critique: Black comedy features a 'tour-de-force' performance from veteran actor George C. Scott. He's good at playing high-strung, serious characters whose strict morals are severely tested. First half of the film unfolds like a melodrama, giving a pretty good account of hospital life, and the shambles they sometimes are. But then, as things look set for a dramatic climax it skews into slapstick comedy. If Paddy Chayefsky's script had maintained its dramatic feel I wonder if Scott would've walked out with the best Actor Oscar. His breakdown (suicide) scene is one of the most gut-wrenchingly real in cinema history. QUOTE: Dr. Bock: ". . .last night I sat in my hotel room reviewing the shambles of my life and contemplating suicide. I said 'no Bock don't do it. You're a doctor, a healer, you're a necessary person, you're life is meaningful'. Then. . .I find out that one of my doctors was killed by a couple of nurses. . .how am I to sustain my feeling of meaningfulness in the face of this?"
Rating: 
Summary: Want to be a doctor? Want to be a Nurse? Watch this movie!
Review: Ahead of its time in 1971 and even more appropriate today, this movie is a must see for any wide eyed angle a mercy thinking of going into medicine. Brave also, it forsaw the shallowness of 60's culture that we are paying for now. Scott gives a great performance as an administrator/doctor, but it is Dianna Rigg's monologue that foreshadows today's "poor rich kids" and what money and no love will do. That is why you don't see THIS counter-culture film on college campuses.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliantly cynical, bitingly funny
Review: Another masterpiece of a screenplay from Paddy Chayefsky. The acting here is first-rate, too. While the film seems a bit dated in some ways, the heart of what Chayefsky is saying--the decay of the human spirit in the face of progress and greed--is timeless. George C. Scott shows here, as Peter Finch does later in "Network", what a great actor can do with great words.
Rating:
Summary: One of George C. Scott's Best
Review: Excellent movie for a home collection. I watch it 2-3 times a year. It gives an excellent snapshot of the struggle of the establishment and anti-establishment in the late '60s.
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Summary: Screaming Funny and Completely Nerve-Shattering
Review: I am somewhat astonished by one or two of the reviews, which seem to indicate that the film concerns 1960s counter-culture angst or that the film suddenly shifts gears mid-way from drama to comedy. From my own point of view, The Hospital is a frighteningly funny film which zeros in on the hell generated by an American big-business mind-set which demands that you fill out form first. Scott is superlative as the doctor being slowly buried alive by an over-powering system which may be enabling a serial killer at work in his hospital; the frequently under-estimated Rigg is his equal as the clear-thinking free-spirit who affords him the possibility to save himself from the inevitable collapse of the system under which he works. Although overshadowed by the masterpiece Network, The Hospital is a thought-provoking, extremely funny, and totally unnerving film which follows densensitization to the needs of your fellow man to it's horrific but logical conclusion. Strongly recommended... unless you're scheduled for surgery in the near future.
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Summary: Most fantastic medical satire on film (or video)
Review: I first viewed this as a movie in a theater and feel its translates well to the TV screen. I have watched it a number of times and find it to be a great hospital satire that seems better with each viewing. The cast is five star and the story terrific although somewhat bizarre. Many of the incidents are exaggerations of what actually can happen in a real hospital with a murder mystery adding to the plot. I hope this will be on DVD soon.
Rating:
Summary: It is about time that this movie be released on DVD
Review: I originally saw this movie in the theater and have seen it on tape. This is a great black medical comedy, well written, well acted, well produced and great to watch. I highly recommend it to healthy people. If you are contemplating hospitalization, perhaps you better wait and see this movie after you return home.
Rating:
Summary: Medicine
Review: I was a surgical intern at Bellevue Hospital in New York in the early Seventies. This is a marvelous, biting commentary on the state of medical care in America, possibly even more pointed no than it was when the film was made. The madcap series of mishaps at the beginning of the film was utterly believable - the stories I could tell! George C. Scott's rant ("We curer nothing!...) is right on. At the end Svott returns to the battlefield. forsaking Diana Rigg. I sent 2 weeks trying to convince myself that I would do no such thing....and failed. The film should be required viewing for all medical studnts.
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Summary: A CURE FOR WHAT AILS YA....
Review: If you ever were scared of hospitals.. DONT SEE THIS MOVIE.. it will only reinforce those fears.. Paddy Chayefsky outdoes himself in this awesome story of bungling, machination and hospital ineptitude. George C. Scott is his confused, overworked and missunderstood best, Diana Rigg as a fast thinking daughter of a wacked out old man convinced he is the "Paracleet of Kaborka (just what is that anyway?), the Wrath of the Lamb, the Angel of the Bottomless Pit.. etc. etc."
Kudos to the performances of: Barnard Hughes, Nancy Marchand(Lou Grant)and Richard Dysart (St. Elsewhere, LA Law). And special kudos to Frances Sternhagen.. "Dr Spezio..Dr. Spezio..his chart is not filled out..." And the best line in the whole film.. "...where do your nurses get their training..Dachau!!!?" See it, buy it, live it, but don't get sick..who know's what name bracelet you could end up with.. DF
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