Pitch black cynical exploration into the state of Medicine in the US set at an overburdened New York City hospital. The central character is Dr. Bock, played by George C. Scott. Bock is a good doctor and was once idealistic about the changes that he could accomplish, but has been sanded down into a middle-aged wreck. His long unhappy marriage has finally ended in divorce, he is estranged from his children, he suffers from depression and suicidal thoughts, and the hospital that he has dedicated his life is an unmitigated disaster more likely to kill the patient and then cure them. The local community is in an uproar because the hospital is throwing poor families out of their tenement building to erect a drug addiction rehab, Vietnam and social issues are tearing apart the country, and someone is stalking the hospital corridors murdering staff in ingenious ways.
Several years later screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky would present Network, another cynical dark satire foreseeing where the state that network news would be going unless we were vigilant. It is with grave horror that one realizes that the prescient Chayefsky was envisioning the formation of the future Fox News Channel and its toxicity, so Network ends up being less satire than warning. The same holds true here. Chayefsky sees Medicine of the early 70s as a dehumanizing goliath slavishly following the almighty dollar and where greed is rewarded over patient care, with the patients coming out with the short end of the stick. Staff is overwhelmed, overworked, undertrained, often incompetent, but no one gives enough of a damn to do anything. Everyone is harried, upset, angry, frustrated, or so looking out for themselves that saving anyone is not even important. Again, Chayefsky foresees the US medical establishment as it transformed in the 80s-90s into the for profit only greed machine that disenfranchised and takes shoddy care of anyone who cannot afford to shell out fo rthe creme de la creme (and even that may be compromised).
The film is filled with amusing and disturbing moments. The fact that no one in the hospital seems too concerned about their staff dropping off like flies to start. An exchange between a group of nurses when one discovers a young intern naked and dead in a hospital bed is priceless. The fact that the killer is ostensibly punishing the medical establishment by making the staff patients in their own hospital and allowing the chronic miscommunications and ineptness to do them in is telling.
Scott is typically aces in the lead role. His anger, his frustration and his desperation are palpable. He has some nice moments with Diana Rigg, as the daughter of a comatose patient and another victim of the hospital incompetence, but their relationship starts out disturbing and it takes a pretty mammoth leap to believe that they fall in love and have tender feelings after moments. It is particularly disturbing that after an insightful tete-a-tete that Rigg returns to prevent Scott's attempted suicide and he instead sexually assaults her, and she is so laid-back about the experience that she spends the night with him and then conjures up a future of marriage and kids with him. One could only get away with such foolishness pre-90s. For her part Rigg is lovely as the off-beat young woman into shamanism who believes in anything and everything, although one could observe that she seems a tad sophisticated. The remainder of the cast have some small moments to shine, especially Nancy Marchand's weary head of nursing, Frances Sternhagen's officious billing assistant who harasses patients for their insurance while they writhe in agony or death throes, and Barnard Hughes in a dual role as a frantic doctor and Rigg's comatose dad.
Unfortunately, as dark, cynical and uncompromising as the film is, it seems pale compared to the godawful state of modern US Medicine. If anything, Chayefsky did not foresee how far the medical establishment would go to make a buck. I should know - I worked in it for a decade and spent even more time seeing it from the patient's end with ill parents and grandparents. It is a disaster. If only audiences of 1971 were to take this film's forecast with more seriousness.
Several years later screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky would present Network, another cynical dark satire foreseeing where the state that network news would be going unless we were vigilant. It is with grave horror that one realizes that the prescient Chayefsky was envisioning the formation of the future Fox News Channel and its toxicity, so Network ends up being less satire than warning. The same holds true here. Chayefsky sees Medicine of the early 70s as a dehumanizing goliath slavishly following the almighty dollar and where greed is rewarded over patient care, with the patients coming out with the short end of the stick. Staff is overwhelmed, overworked, undertrained, often incompetent, but no one gives enough of a damn to do anything. Everyone is harried, upset, angry, frustrated, or so looking out for themselves that saving anyone is not even important. Again, Chayefsky foresees the US medical establishment as it transformed in the 80s-90s into the for profit only greed machine that disenfranchised and takes shoddy care of anyone who cannot afford to shell out fo rthe creme de la creme (and even that may be compromised).
The film is filled with amusing and disturbing moments. The fact that no one in the hospital seems too concerned about their staff dropping off like flies to start. An exchange between a group of nurses when one discovers a young intern naked and dead in a hospital bed is priceless. The fact that the killer is ostensibly punishing the medical establishment by making the staff patients in their own hospital and allowing the chronic miscommunications and ineptness to do them in is telling.
Scott is typically aces in the lead role. His anger, his frustration and his desperation are palpable. He has some nice moments with Diana Rigg, as the daughter of a comatose patient and another victim of the hospital incompetence, but their relationship starts out disturbing and it takes a pretty mammoth leap to believe that they fall in love and have tender feelings after moments. It is particularly disturbing that after an insightful tete-a-tete that Rigg returns to prevent Scott's attempted suicide and he instead sexually assaults her, and she is so laid-back about the experience that she spends the night with him and then conjures up a future of marriage and kids with him. One could only get away with such foolishness pre-90s. For her part Rigg is lovely as the off-beat young woman into shamanism who believes in anything and everything, although one could observe that she seems a tad sophisticated. The remainder of the cast have some small moments to shine, especially Nancy Marchand's weary head of nursing, Frances Sternhagen's officious billing assistant who harasses patients for their insurance while they writhe in agony or death throes, and Barnard Hughes in a dual role as a frantic doctor and Rigg's comatose dad.
Unfortunately, as dark, cynical and uncompromising as the film is, it seems pale compared to the godawful state of modern US Medicine. If anything, Chayefsky did not foresee how far the medical establishment would go to make a buck. I should know - I worked in it for a decade and spent even more time seeing it from the patient's end with ill parents and grandparents. It is a disaster. If only audiences of 1971 were to take this film's forecast with more seriousness.