Rating: 
Summary: You'll be in stitches!
Review: 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!"
Rating:
Summary: The Hospital plus 33 years
Review: Its amazing to look back and view this film again to see how " we made out"!Well we didnt! "The Hospital" underscores the malaise that was beginning in the early 70,s in hospitals. That malaise has now spread into a full blown epidemic. Today, 2004, the hospital,mostly any hospital is one of the most dangerous places to reside in. They are unhealthy,replete with staff shortages, racked with mal practice suits, hammered by HMO's subverted by medicare rules and regulations and emeregency rooms that are packed with aliens getting their initial health care! This film shows how organized mayhem effects health care and converts that to disorginized health care. George C. Scott is totally defeated physician who is rejuvenated by the allure of Diana Rigg( who wouldnt be) Its too late for Scott and many of the patients that fall to DR. Wellbeck's unsteady hands or Bernard Hughes' philosophy. In the end Scott stays on in his quagmire sort of like a Capt who chooses to go down with his ship. Unrelenting and terrific film hits all the marks so get ready! CP
Rating:
Summary: The Hospital plus 33 years
Review: Its amazing to look back and view this film again to see how " we made out"! Well we didnt! "The Hospital" underscores the malaise that was beginning in the early 70,s in hospitals. That malaise has now spread into a full blown epidemic. Today, 2004, the hospital,mostly any hospital is one of the most dangerous places to reside in. They are unhealthy,replete with staff shortages, racked with mal practice suits, hammered by HMO's subverted by medicare rules and regulations and emeregency rooms that are packed with aliens getting their initial health care! This film shows how organized mayhem effects health care and converts that to disorginized health care. George C. Scott is totally defeated physician who is rejuvenated by the allure of Diana Rigg( who wouldnt be) Its too late for Scott and many of the patients that fall to DR. Wellbeck's unsteady hands or Bernard Hughes' philosophy. In the end Scott stays on in his quagmire sort of like a Capt who chooses to go down with his ship. Unrelenting and terrific film hits all the marks so get ready! CP
Rating: 
Summary: A ferocious George C. Scott at the top of his game......
Review: Oh how I miss the brilliant words of Paddy Chayefsky, the man who also gave us "Network." This film, like his later satire, skewers American culture without regard for any sensitivities: literally everyone is on the chopping block. While on its face a devastating attack on the bureaucratic, dehumanized medical establishment, it also manages to include in its hit list a wide range of deserving targets: the self-indulgent young, self-serving (and hypocritical) minority group "activists", loveless sex, insecurity, the perils of age, fears of death.....it has it all. Standing at the center, however, is Mr. Scott, giving what can only be called a masterful performance. While he never fails to capture the inner depth of a middle-aged man near the end of his rope (both in terms of his personal and professional life), the highlight remains a speech he gives to Diana Rigg near the middle of the film. Interrupted by Rigg while attempting suicide, he begins his savage monologue by indicting not only her ridiculous hippy posturing, but also roars against his failed marriage, his worthless children, the emptiness of his job, and the end of his overall passion for life. The speech builds in intensity until it reaches a fever pitch, giving Scott an opportunity to give the finest display of rage ever captured on screen. A modern classic and a MUST for DVD.
Rating:
Summary: A ferocious George C. Scott at the top of his game......
Review: Oh how I miss the brilliant words of Paddy Chayefsky, the man who also gave us "Network." This film, like his later satire, skewers American culture without regard for any sensitivities: literally everyone is on the chopping block. While on its face a devastating attack on the bureaucratic, dehumanized medical establishment, it also manages to include in its hit list a wide range of deserving targets: the self-indulgent young, self-serving (and hypocritical) minority group "activists", loveless sex, insecurity, the perils of age, fears of death.....it has it all. Standing at the center, however, is Mr. Scott, giving what can only be called a masterful performance. While he never fails to capture the inner depth of a middle-aged man near the end of his rope (both in terms of his personal and professional life), the highlight remains a speech he gives to Diana Rigg near the middle of the film. Interrupted by Rigg while attempting suicide, he begins his savage monologue by indicting not only her ridiculous hippy posturing, but also roars against his failed marriage, his worthless children, the emptiness of his job, and the end of his overall passion for life. The speech builds in intensity until it reaches a fever pitch, giving Scott an opportunity to give the finest display of rage ever captured on screen. A modern classic and a MUST for DVD.
Rating: 
Summary: The star is successful, but the script dies
Review: Only a volcanic performance by George C. Scott keeps `The Hospital' alive once Paddy Chayefsy's script flatlines.
The blackly comic set-up of the movie's first half _ a large urban hospital whose crass staff is dying off along with its hapless patients _ yields to smug moralizing in the second half and a ludicrous denouement.
As it unravels, `The Hospital' plays like a half-baked sketch for Chayefsky's far superior `Network,' and viewers looking for satire are better directed to that movie.
Still, in misanthropic medical director Dr. Herbert Bock, Scott has a character that allows him to give full vent to his talents as well as to Chayefsky's middle-class, white male rants.
Estranged from his family, curt with associates, overwhelmed by his job, Bock begins the movie one jolt short of suicide. That comes as other inhabitants of his institution beging dying off, in what seem to be hilarious if horrifying accidents.
But in the first of Chayefsky's major blunders, the good doctor's salavation arrives in the form of a free-spirited Southwestern hippie chick, played by Diana Rigg in an odd bit of casting.
After seeing this movie, Rigg talked about the difficulty of watching oneself on-screen. That's true figuratively and literally here. Her character is written not as a person but as middle-aged male wish fulfillment.
`The girl,' Barbara Drummond, mouths psycho-babble. Supposedly caring for her comatose father, she wanders around the hospital braless, her shirt unbuttoned to the waist. Rather than sexy, it seems witless and looks sexless on the utterly undeveloped Diana Rigg.
Wardrobe failures aside, at least Rigg has a semblance of a role. That's more than can be said of an estimable supporting cast that includes Barnard Hughes and Nancy Marchand.
There's only room for one person in Chayefsky's script, and that's his mouthpiece, Bock. It's to Scott's great credit that he makes his every moment on screen riveting. Fans will want to rent this movie. Others will want treatment afterward.
Rating:
Summary: The star is successful, but the script dies
Review: Only a volcanic performance by George C. Scott keeps `The Hospital' alive once Paddy Chayefsy's script flatlines.
The blackly comic set-up of the movie's first half _ a large urban hospital whose crass staff is dying off along with its hapless patients _ yields to smug moralizing in the second half and a ludicrous denouement.
As it unravels, `The Hospital' plays like a half-baked sketch for Chayefsky's far superior `Network,' and viewers looking for satire are better directed to that movie.
Still, in misanthropic medical director Dr. Herbert Bock, Scott has a character that allows him to give full vent to his talents as well as to Chayefsky's middle-class, white male rants.
Estranged from his family, curt with associates, overwhelmed by his job, Bock begins the movie one jolt short of suicide. That comes as other inhabitants of his institution beging dying off, in what seem to be hilarious if horrifying accidents.
But in the first of Chayefsky's major blunders, the good doctor's salavation arrives in the form of a free-spirited Southwestern hippie chick, played by Diana Rigg in an odd bit of casting.
After seeing this movie, Rigg talked about the difficulty of watching oneself on-screen. That's true figuratively and literally here. Her character is written not as a person but as middle-aged male wish fulfillment.
`The girl,' Barbara Drummond, mouths psycho-babble. Supposedly caring for her comatose father, she wanders around the hospital braless, her shirt unbuttoned to the waist. Rather than sexy, it seems witless and looks sexless on the utterly undeveloped Diana Rigg.
Wardrobe failures aside, at least Rigg has a semblance of a role. That's more than can be said of an estimable supporting cast that includes Barnard Hughes and Nancy Marchand.
There's only room for one person in Chayefsky's script, and that's his mouthpiece, Bock. It's to Scott's great credit that he makes his every moment on screen riveting. Fans will want to rent this movie. Others will want treatment afterward.
Rating:
Summary: The Hospital as microcosm of world's problems circa 1971
Review: Paddy Chayefsky, the screenwriter of "The Hospital," introduces many of the themes here that he will perfect and revisit in 1976's essential film "Network" and his spiritual/psychedelic experiment "Altered States" (1980). "The Hospital," more or less, is about spiritual malaise -- when work can no longer replace sex as a primal drive (to loosely paraphrase one of Freud's maxims) ; when technology and scientific knowledge work to conspire against those it is supposed to help ; when generation gaps form as a result of all these changes. George C. Scott plays Bock, a middle-aged, "male menopausal" suicidal doctor who is trying to figure out where his lust for life is as well as who is killing off his doctors in a Manhattan hospital one by one. Like another classic George C. Scott film, Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove," this is unusually dark terrain even for dark comedy. The cure for Bock's lack of passion comes in the person of Diana Rigg, a mid-twenties spiritual eclectic and acid-head. Ironically, she is presented as a complete space-case, but is the only object that can bring Bock to his central realization -- that he is "middle class" and that for him, love does not conquer all, but, rather, responsibility. Chayefsky shows himself off here to be a master technician, deploying language that would later sound at home in the TV show "ER," as he weaves a skewed realism with his particular brand of post-Marxist social commentary. An odd film, for sure, but definitely worth checking out.
Rating: 
Summary: Schizoid
Review: Schizophrenic film that can't decide whether it's Playhouse 90 or Airplane!. In one corner are Scott and Chayevsky making with the intense psychological realism and some really powerful moments; in the other is chaotic urban hospital laboring at zany gallows humor with a few scattered laughs. In between is director Hiller hoping for single workable whole. Result is awkward pastiche that doesn't live up to super-rich potential. Film is object lesson in how miscasting of even top-notch talent can produce disappointment. I keep wishing gifted amateurs like Zucker Bros. & Jim Abrams had gotten hold of idea first. Sure, Scott is great actor, but he's so authentic he overwhelms ambient efforts at satire; yes, Chayevsky gets off some good lines, but keeps piling on the prose long after it's peaked out. What the movie really needs are more sight gags and a lot less talky angst. In short, let the visuals carry the message -- something word fiend Chayevsky could never allow. My advice: once hippie chick Rigg starts bragging about Scott's restored virility, switch off, because it's a downhill ride from there.
Rating: 
Summary: unrealistic
Review: The main draw of this movie is the rare appearance of Dianna Rigg outside Shakespearian theatre after her Avengers run. She is much more sexual in appearance and speech than her role in The Avengers including a low cut outfit and what seems a heavily padded bra. For the plot to work the hospital is organized in a totally different, suboptimal, way than real hospitals. For instance, in real emergency rooms people are treated first and then at checkout asked for their insurance. Also for the plot to work totally illogical things have to happen. Not to spoil the movie for you I cannot tell details, but ask yourself on the second viewing how a certain person could gain the knowledge that motivated his conduct.
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