The Hospital
I came to this with admittedly high hopes. The name Paddy Chayefsky, screenwriter here, is forever coupled with his perfect satire Network, and I’d read more than a few comments about this that implied that, though made 5 years earlier, it pretty much was “Network in a hospital” – which to me sounded fantastic. I can’t say I was let down – that is pretty much what the movie is. But I can’t say the movie is much more than that short pitch.
Arthur Hiller is a perfectly capable director but, again, he never really goes beyond what’s needed; never close to Sidney Lumet’s work. George C. Scott has a scene that more than matches the “I’m as mad as hell …” scene in Network – but at few other points does he seem quite so convincingly done as Peter Finch did.
I’m sure I’ll give it a further look in the future, either in a double bill with Network or something else … the chaotic hospital scenes of Bringing out the Dead come to mind. Scott’s despairing ramblings reminded me a lot, too, of William Peter Blatty’s faithless characters in The Exorcist series. There’s a point where he talks about impotence – literal, sexual impotence but also impotence in life, that he’s lost the desire to do even “the only thing I ever loved,” his work. It’s very reminiscent of Karras in The Exorcist; and another moment, the Network moment where Scott practically screams out the window about the incompetence of the health system (“We’ve established the most enormous medical entity ever conceived… and people are sicker than ever. We cure nothing! We heal nothing!”) reminded me of Scott’s own performance in The Exorcist III, when he practically spits bile at the demon proclaiming “This I believe in… I believe in death. I believe in disease. I believe in injustice and inhumanity, torture and anger and hate… I believe in murder. I believe in pain. I believe in cruelty and infidelity. I believe in slime and stink and every crawling, putrid thing… every possible ugliness and corruption, you son of a bitch. I believe… in you.”
Another time, I’m sure I’ll get a lot more out of this. I don’t think it will ever feel like more than a rehearsal for its vastly superior successor, though.