Post by artraveler on Jun 2, 2021 9:24:44 GMT -8
The Hospital, 1971
Dr. Herbert Bock (George C. Scott) is chief of medicine at a large metropolitan hospital. He is midlife, feeling the rigors of advancing age, questioning the decisions he has made in life. He is acerbic, with underlings and peers. He has left his wife of 24 years and is estranged from his son and daughter. He is systematically riding himself of friends, family and acquaintances. The Freudian view is that he is serious about taking his own life.
The phone rings in his hotel room and Herb wakes to the news that one of his interns has died. Beginning a series of events that seem improbable, but in today’s medical environment seems almost tame. Dr. Bock is informed that the intern, Dr. Schafer, is dead of an insulin overdose and his blood sugar was 26 when he died. Dr. Schafer had used an empty bed for a late-night sexual romp with a nurse and fallen asleep after. A nurse, unfamiliar with the patients on the floor had attached an IV to him thinking him to be a patient.
Shortly afterword a technician in the lab is found dead in the emergency room from a heart attack. As Dr. Bock is dealing with these crises, one of his residents presents a young woman, (Diana Rigg) who is seeking to remove her father from the hospital and take him home to the mountains in Mexico. He gives what Dr. Bock describes as a gothic horror story.
Her father had checked into the hospital 10 days earlier for a routine physical. The physical was going well when the lab detected protein in his urine. A biopsy was done, in the process, they nicked an artery near or on his kidney and Mr. Drummond, (Bernard Hughes) began to bleed out. Emergency surgery was ordered and a cutter by the name of Wellbeck, (Richard Dysart) performs the surgery, removing the kidney. Post-surgery Drummond is given the wrong medication and his other kidney goes sour. Through great efforts the doctors save the kidney, but the patient is now comatose.
Dr. Bock absorbs this story with looks of wonder, bewilderment and horror and sums up. In short in the space of one week a perfectly healthy man checks into the hospital. We chop out one kidney, damage another one and put him in a coma. The entire medical establishment has conspired to murder this one man. Send him home before we do kill him.
Barbara Drummond, (Rigg) asks to use the phone in Bock’s office. This is the key to the entire movie. It is the moment when Bock is no longer talking about his impotent life but is actually looking for the end. Some truths of middle age crisis and middle-class morality are revealed and Bock rapes Barbara, with her willing cooperation. The next morning, Bock no longer impotent in either mind or body is contemplating leaving the hospital for the mountains of Mexico to live with Barbara. Another hospital nurse dies, this time on the operating table, a case of mistaken identity.
This movie should be required viewing in every hospital, clinic, nursing home and medical school every year. The last year has brought the overhyped medical profession down to medicine man level, blowing smoke and chanting. In the words of Dr. Bock, “The greatest medical entity in the history of mankind and we can’t cure anything.”
Paddy Chayefsky wrote the screen play, and the story is as relevant today as 50 years ago, perhaps more so. His credits cover television movies and major releases. Network is among his credits as is Paint your Wagon and the Americanization of Emily. He can be depended on to deliver stories with interest and questions that often have no clear answers.
Anther Hiller directed and to his credit comedies and drama from Silver Streak to Man of Lancha. His talent in the hospital is letting Chayefsky screenplay run without notable interruption. Scott is at his best as the suicidal Dr. Bock. I think he occasionally overplays the role but that is a minor distraction. Diana Rigg is well, Diana Rigg in her 20s beautiful and English, who could ask for more and really as far as the story goes, she is almost extraneous, eye candy in an open blouse and mini skirt.
This movie reminds us that, at least in the early 70s, middle class morality is not dead. Humor, even dark humor, provides lessons for real life and our institutions are not malevolent but just incompetent. Ask your Dr. if or when he watched it last?
Dr. Herbert Bock (George C. Scott) is chief of medicine at a large metropolitan hospital. He is midlife, feeling the rigors of advancing age, questioning the decisions he has made in life. He is acerbic, with underlings and peers. He has left his wife of 24 years and is estranged from his son and daughter. He is systematically riding himself of friends, family and acquaintances. The Freudian view is that he is serious about taking his own life.
The phone rings in his hotel room and Herb wakes to the news that one of his interns has died. Beginning a series of events that seem improbable, but in today’s medical environment seems almost tame. Dr. Bock is informed that the intern, Dr. Schafer, is dead of an insulin overdose and his blood sugar was 26 when he died. Dr. Schafer had used an empty bed for a late-night sexual romp with a nurse and fallen asleep after. A nurse, unfamiliar with the patients on the floor had attached an IV to him thinking him to be a patient.
Shortly afterword a technician in the lab is found dead in the emergency room from a heart attack. As Dr. Bock is dealing with these crises, one of his residents presents a young woman, (Diana Rigg) who is seeking to remove her father from the hospital and take him home to the mountains in Mexico. He gives what Dr. Bock describes as a gothic horror story.
Her father had checked into the hospital 10 days earlier for a routine physical. The physical was going well when the lab detected protein in his urine. A biopsy was done, in the process, they nicked an artery near or on his kidney and Mr. Drummond, (Bernard Hughes) began to bleed out. Emergency surgery was ordered and a cutter by the name of Wellbeck, (Richard Dysart) performs the surgery, removing the kidney. Post-surgery Drummond is given the wrong medication and his other kidney goes sour. Through great efforts the doctors save the kidney, but the patient is now comatose.
Dr. Bock absorbs this story with looks of wonder, bewilderment and horror and sums up. In short in the space of one week a perfectly healthy man checks into the hospital. We chop out one kidney, damage another one and put him in a coma. The entire medical establishment has conspired to murder this one man. Send him home before we do kill him.
Barbara Drummond, (Rigg) asks to use the phone in Bock’s office. This is the key to the entire movie. It is the moment when Bock is no longer talking about his impotent life but is actually looking for the end. Some truths of middle age crisis and middle-class morality are revealed and Bock rapes Barbara, with her willing cooperation. The next morning, Bock no longer impotent in either mind or body is contemplating leaving the hospital for the mountains of Mexico to live with Barbara. Another hospital nurse dies, this time on the operating table, a case of mistaken identity.
This movie should be required viewing in every hospital, clinic, nursing home and medical school every year. The last year has brought the overhyped medical profession down to medicine man level, blowing smoke and chanting. In the words of Dr. Bock, “The greatest medical entity in the history of mankind and we can’t cure anything.”
Paddy Chayefsky wrote the screen play, and the story is as relevant today as 50 years ago, perhaps more so. His credits cover television movies and major releases. Network is among his credits as is Paint your Wagon and the Americanization of Emily. He can be depended on to deliver stories with interest and questions that often have no clear answers.
Anther Hiller directed and to his credit comedies and drama from Silver Streak to Man of Lancha. His talent in the hospital is letting Chayefsky screenplay run without notable interruption. Scott is at his best as the suicidal Dr. Bock. I think he occasionally overplays the role but that is a minor distraction. Diana Rigg is well, Diana Rigg in her 20s beautiful and English, who could ask for more and really as far as the story goes, she is almost extraneous, eye candy in an open blouse and mini skirt.
This movie reminds us that, at least in the early 70s, middle class morality is not dead. Humor, even dark humor, provides lessons for real life and our institutions are not malevolent but just incompetent. Ask your Dr. if or when he watched it last?
