George Scott gave the performance of a lifetime in Paddy Chayefsky's THE HOSPITAL, a very dark drama about an aging big city hospital and a middle-aged physician on the verge of suicide. Along comes Diana Rigg as a free spirit determined to save him from himself. Their dialog crackles, and it is clear they are made for each other from the outset. But will she save him? Their one sex scene is both graphic and memorable for its passion and fury. Meanwhile, the hospital is under siege by a group of agitators who don't want it to turn a condemned building into a cancer center. And a serial killer is loose in the hospital, specializing in doctors and nurses. A good part of the movie, though, is squarely focused on Scott. As it should be. What a difference a few years made back when this movie was made. 1962 had given us THE INTERNS, a hokey, old-fashioned reworking of DR. KILDARE with terrible acting and a cardboard script. Along came 1971 and THE HOSPITAL. Less than 10 years later. Hollywood did something right for a change. Watching THE HOSPITAL today is a reminder of how much medical shows like ST. ELSEWHERE and SCRUBS owe to this enduring classic. And if THE HOSPITAL reminds you of NETWORK, it should. Same scripter.

Read a biography of the late George C. Scott and you'll discover why he was so enormously talented. He was asked by an interviewer what his secret was when making each character he played his own. Scott replied, he possessed inside him a burning fire which drove him. In one of his last interviewers, he sadly revealed he had lost the drive. This was not the case when he starred in the movie, "The Hospital." In this offering, he plays talented doctor Bock, medical director of one of the finest hospitals in the country. However, life has dealt him some crippling problems, such as losing his wife to a divorce, becoming alienated from both his promising children and worse of all, believing himself to be physically impotent. At this point, he is now becoming complacent, morose and frequently fantasizes various ways of committing suicide. To add to his growing list of personal obstacles, his main reason for being, his hospital has come under siege by students and neighborhood protesters, incompetent doctors like Dr. Welbeck (Richard Dysart) and a mysterious MD. who is killing both patients and doctors alike, because he believes he is "the Wrath of the Lamb." (Barnard Hughes). Few choices are left to Bock. One is promising doctor Brubaker (Robert Walden) whom he confides in by saying, "If there were an oven around here, I would put my head in it." The second is a luscious young woman, named Barbara who is attracted to Bock because he acts like a wounded bear. Paddy Chayefsky wrote the screen-play and Arthur Hiller did an extremely good job of directing this dramatically interesting, dark story, but a vehicle nonetheless, lit by the fire of George C. Scott. ****

Hospital (1971)

George C. Scott is amazing, just terrific as a struggling, aging, world-weary doctor. A couple of the speeches he gives (from the sharply written screenplay) are first rate quotable stuff. See this movie for him alone.

Overall, this is certainly a New Hollywood movie, straight out of the late 1960s politics and sexual revolution. It's also a bit of a middle-aged male fantasy (the director and writer and main actor being of course all middle aged males). I mean, a key line in the movie is when young and slightly batty Barbara, played by Diana Rigg (Emma Peel in the television series "The Avengers"),says to the very middle aged George C. Scott, "I have a thing for middle aged men." Or something to that effect--and you know what happens next.

But that's the weakest part of the movie. The best part is the hospital scene itself, the chaotic and scary lack of medical professionalism at an under-funded big city medical center. Scott plays the chief of medicine, Dr. Bock, and he gradually sniffs out a truly murderous element to the place, a kind of whodunnit built into this otherwise growing drama of doctors inside and protesters outside (usually) and a general sense that the old order isn't able to keep order against the rising restlessness of young people and their demands.

In a way, the flakiness of Barbara and the rock-steady but yet suicidal authority of Bock are symbolic of the two sides, the two generations, that signified so much back then. Barbara suggests dropping out and turning on, and the doctor grows to the idea. I mean, who wouldn't in his shoes, having Diana Rigg begging you to leave your miserable job and life and moving to the mountains of Mexico to make babies. That's no exaggeration--that's the carrot, and the doctor sees it the way many people saw it then, the escape as a reasonable alternative to a crumbling world.

And yet, the hospital has needs, like dying people, and a group of people displaced from their apartment building next door, and of course this murderer on the loose.

In a way, it's a sloppy, terribly constructed movie. But it has an element of abandonment and realism from the era that really works. If you just go along with the superficial parts of the plot, which are fun, you might just get sucked into the tawdry medical world in 1971 Manhattan.

The writer, by the way, is Paddy Chayefsky, and he won his second Oscar for this screenplay. It was considered that timely and sharp at the time, and there is some terrific writing, some really good dialog to keep it humming. (He did a ton of television, but also next wrote the screenplay for "Network," winning his third Oscar for that.)

The director, Arthur Hiller, moved from 1960s television to movie directing and made a lot of middling fare, though a few became well known such as "Love Story" (1970) and "Man of La Mancha" (1972). The cinematographer Victor J. Kemper is straight out of New Hollywood and his style feels beautifully unpolished and complex (he went on to do a lot of solid movies, some really terrific like "Dog Day Afternoon"),and this helps hold the disparate plot elements together.