The Hospital (Movie)

     The Hospital (1971) [D: Arthur Hiller. George C. Scott. Diana Rigg] Dr Bock (Scott), chief of staff, feels suicidal because he thinks he’s accomplished nothing worthwhile. His marriage had ended, his children are petty crooks, the hospital he works for is a shambles. Just how much of a shambles becomes apparent when a series of murders occur, all of them the result of the murderer’s taking advantage of the chaos and sloppiness and poor management. Barbara Drummond (Rigg), the daughter of a comatose patient, wants to take her father home to Mexico, and a group of community activists wants to stop hospital expansion. Bock and Drummond have an affair; her father, whose brain has been fried by the semi-competent treatment, turns out to be the murderer; and Bock turns down the opportunity to go to Mexico with Drummond, because, as he says, "Someone has to be responsible." But he does help her get her father away from the scene of his last murder, and on the way to Mexico. I suppose this evasion of justice is what makes this a "black comedy", as IMDbF terms it.
     Doesn’t sound like much of a movie, and it isn’t, but it has an odd retro charm. It’s very 70s in its tone, plotting, acting, and editing. Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote and co-produced, received one of his three Oscars for the script, which is certainly well-constructed. But a well-constructed script doesn’t necessarily give us characters real-seeming enough to engage us beyond the plot. Didn’t do it for me, anyhow.
     My main interest in the movie was to see how Chayefsky resolved the various twists and tangles he invented. The resolution, Bock’s surfacing from his deep funk and taking control of his life (and the hospital), seems to be contrived. Marie said the movie wasn’t very Hollywood, by which she meant that it didn’t have the happy superficiality we nowadays expect from Hollywood (when we don’t expect gory horror, that is). But the ending is pure Hollywood I think: only a Hollywood movie would show a character enjoying such an easy cure for depression. **½