The Hospital (1971)

          Speaking as a cineaste, a devotee of ’70s film, and a screenwriter, I’m about to commit an act of heresy by admitting that I don’t dig The Hospital, which netted Paddy Chayefsky one of his three writing Oscars. While I understand the use of dark satire to skewer the foibles of the medical industry—and, on a larger scale, the foibles of bureaucracy and capitalism run amok—I’ve watched The Hospital twice at very different times in my life, and on both occasions I’ve found the movie to be cold, pretentious, and tiresome. Seeing as how Chayefsky’s writing was singled out for praise, it’s possible my reaction stems from a problem of execution. Arthur Hiller’s sloppy camerawork and undisciplined dramaturgy prevents a clear point of view from coalescing, so he seems lost as the story zooms back and forth between tonalities.

          Proving that giving an ambitious Chayevsky script a pleasing shape wasn’t impossible, Sidney Lumet made a masterpiece from Chayefsky’s next opus, Network (1976). Many of the outrageous narrative maneuvers that make Network so wonderful are present in The Hospital, but they don’t work nearly as well. The omniscient narration, the religious allegory, the spectacular monologues—whereas these elements feel germane to the coherent lunacy of Network, they contribute to making The Hospital feel scattershot. The Hospital is not without its virtues, of course, because George C. Scott’s leading performance is impassioned, and the movie’s dialogue vibrates with Chayefsky’s unique blend of indignation and intellectualism (even though all of the characters sound identical). Furthermore, the best jabs at the medical industry land with tremendous impact. Taken as a whole, however, The Hospital is contrived, episodic, long-winded, and underwhelming.

          The picture is set at a fictional Manhattan hospital, which is perpetually surrounded by protestors, some of whom also work at the facility. Chief of Medicine Dr. Herbert Bock (Scott) is a suicidal drunk reeling from a divorce, and therefore emotionally unprepared for a series of crises. One by one, doctors and nurses start dying as a result of absurd mix-ups—injections given to the wrong patients, sick people pushed aside and “forgotten to death,” and so on. Herbert’s life takes a turn when he meets Barbara Drummond (Diana Rigg), the daughter of an eccentric patient. A hippie involved with Native American mysticism, she tries to remove her father from the hospital, sparking many debates about the efficacy of Herbert’s management. Other subplots include the travails of one Dr. Welbeck (Richard Dysart), a snobbish surgeon who has incorporated himself in order to prioritize money over medicine. All of these things come together in wild ways. A serial killer stalks the hospital’s halls. Herbert confesses self-destructive thoughts to a shrink, nearly injects himself with lethal chemicals, and overcomes impotence by raping Barbara.
          In one of the film’s least pleasing developments, Barbara interprets Herbert’s sexual assault as an act of love. Suffice to say the film is not as sharp on women’s issues as it is on economics and medical ethics.

          While The Hospital is all over the place in terms of mood and themes, Scott is incredible, even if the script requires him to exclaim “Oh, my God!” a few too many times, and the supporting cast is filled with lively players. Beyond Dysart and Rigg, The Hospital features Roberts Blossom, Stockard Channing, Stephen Elliot, Katherine Hellmond, Barnard Hughes, Nancy Marchand, Frances Sternhagen, and Robert Walden. Moreover, the movie has unquestionable literary quality, and it’s a meticulously researched examination of a worthy topic. Yet it’s also bewildering and strident and ugly. Still, what else could be expected from a self-proclaimed examination of “the whole wounded madness of our times”? Happily, Chayefsky found a perfect vessel for his op-ed rage in his next project.

The Hospital: FUNKY

A Little Night Music (1977)

          Considering his godhead status in the world of musical theater, composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim has been strangely unrepresented in movies. Although most of his major plays have been telecast in some form or another, to date only six have become feature films: West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), A Little Night Music (1977), Sweeney Todd (2007), and Into the Woods (2014). The 30-year gap between A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd is partially attributable to musicals going out of fashion, and it’s fair to say that West Side Story is, to date, the only unqualified smash Sondheim movie adaptation. Still, a talent of Sondheim’s stature surely deserves better in general—and better, specifically, than the middling film version of A Little Night Music.

          Adapted from the Ingmar Bergman movie Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), which also inspired Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982), A Little Night Music premiered onstage in 1973, introducing the bittersweet ballad “Send in the Clowns.” Cover versions by Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins popularized the tune. Like many of Sondheim’s musicals, A Little Night Music is a sophisticated collage of intricate musicality and rigorous wordplay, to say nothing of complex plotting, so it was hardly a natural for a mainstream adaptation. Indeed, the movie version was financed by a German company and distributed in the U.S. by, off all entities, Roger Corman’s New World Pictures.

          Elizabeth Taylor, far from the apex of her box-office power but still a formidable presence, leads a cast including Len Cariou, Lesley-Anne Down, and Diana Rigg. Set in turn-of-the-century Austria, A Little Night Music tracks the romantic travails of a group of wealthy but lonely people. For instance, middle-aged lawyer Fredrik (Cariou) has recently married his second wife, 18-year-old beauty Anne (Down), though he carries a torch for middle-aged actress Desiree (Taylor). Meanwhile, Fredrik’s son, priest-in-training Erich (Christopher Guard), wrestles with sexual longing and family friend Countess Charlotte (Rigg) laments the passage of time.

          The movie opens with the characters performing onstage as the song “Night Waltz” presents rarified central themes (one lyric states that “love is a lecture on how to correct your mistakes”). After a graceful transition to location photography, the movie winds through its narrative, and most numbers are staged as intimate dramatic scenes. As always, Sondheim’s language is dazzling. Anne assures the sex-crazed Erich that “my lap isn’t one of the devil’s snares,” and Fredrik offers the following observation: “I’m afraid being young in itself is a trifle ridiculous.” In one of A Little Night Music’s nimblest numbers, “Soon,” Fredrik contemplates ravaging his wife, who remains a virgin nearly a year into their marriage (“I still want and/or love you,” Fredrik sings). Although Broadway veteran Cariou has a strong voice, the best performance actually comes from Rigg, who imbues “Every Day a Little Death” with hard-won wisdom. Conversely, Taylor fails to impress when she delivers “Send in the Clowns.” In fact, Taylor is the film’s biggest weak spot, thanks to her distracting cleavage and flamboyant acting and weak singing.

          Yet the ultimate blame for the mediocre nature of this film must fall on Harold Prince, who directed the original Broadway production as well as the movie, and on Sondheim. Prince’s filmmaking is humorless and mechanical, failing to translate the elegance of the material into cinematic fluidity. And for all their intelligence and sophistication, Sondheim’s songs are frequently cumbersome and pretentious. The film version of A Little Night Music contains many fine elements, but if it served as any viewer’s first introduction to Sondheim, the viewer might be perplexed as to what the fuss over the Grammy-, Oscar-, Pulitzer- and Tony-winning songsmith is all about.

A Little Night Music: FUNKY

Theatre of Blood (1973)

          The enjoyably nasty Theatre of Blood is one of Vincent Price’s best shockers, not only because of the droll storyline—an actor murders his critics—but because Price gets to demonstrate so many colors in his dramatic spectrum. Although once again consigned to incarnating a homicidal madman, the horror-cinema legend also “plays” several key characters from the Shakespearean canon, because each of his crimes is themed to a particular work by the Bard. Thus, rather than merely speechifying about how he’s been wronged by the world—the usual mode for Price’s villains—the character of Edward Lionheart performs snippets from Hamlet (“To be or not to be”), Julius Caesar (“Friends, Romans, Countrymen”), and so on. It’s apparent that Price is having a blast, and his good cheer makes up for the overall gruesomeness of the movie.

         Plus, while director Douglas Hickock can’t match the high style of other ’70s filmmakers who worked with Price (notably Robert Fuest, who made the gonzo Dr. Phibes movies, to which the storyline of Theatre of Blood owes a considerable debt), Hickock benefits from an exemplary supporting cast. Diana Rigg plays Lionheart’s daughter/accomplice, and actors portraying Lionheart’s “guest victims” (as they’re billed in the trailer) include such venerable Brits as Harry Andrews, Jack Hawkins, Michael Hordern, and Robert Morley.

          The story begins with Lionheart suffering the final humiliation of an unsatisfying career: Critics deny him the award he longed to win for his farewell season. Lionheart tries to kill himself but survives, then finds a hiding place and schemes, along with various murderous helpers, to kill each of his detractors in spectacular fashion. The bloody deaths involve cannibalism, decapitation, dismemberment, and other such horrors; as a result, Theatre of Blood lives up to its title with a fair amount of stomach-churning gore. Thankfully, the grimy stuff is complemented with a measure of wit. However, the storyline is quite episodic, so depending on one’s taste for bloodshed or Shakespeare (or both), the pattern of outlandish murders might seem repetitious after a while.

          What keeps the movie watchable, therefore, is Price’s giddy flamboyance. Masterfully employing his singular voice and rearranging his elastic features into masks of artistic anguish or sadistic glee, as the scene demands, Price plays for the cheap seats in every scene, somehow managing to simultaneously deliver a credible performance and spoof his reputation for hammy showboating. Although Theatre of Blood never quite rises above its fright-cinema constraints, the way the Dr. Phibes movies did with their perverse campiness, the movie is a treat for fans of offbeat horror films and, of course, for devotees of Price’s unique screen persona.

Theatre of Blood: GROOVY

Julius Caesar (1970)

          Although the idea of Charlton Heston playing classical roles always inspires trepidation, Heston is quite potent as Marc Anthony in this lusty adaptation of the Shakespeare classic. Instead, it’s the usually impeccable Jason Robards, playing treacherous senator Brutus, who underwhelms. Whereas one might expect Heston’s distinctly American persona to be an impediment in this milieu, his flamboyance fits the grandeur of Shakespearean English; conversely, Robards’ internalized moodiness is too quiet for director Stuart Burge’s muscular approach to the text. Screenwriter Robert Furnival hacked a few passages from the play, shortening the running time and making room for flourishes like an elaborate battlefield finale, but the core of the piece is intact. In 44 B.C., Roman emperor Julius Caesar (John Gielgud) cements his power through military victories, sparking fears among senators like Brutus, Casca (Robert Vaughn), and Cassius (Richard Johnson) that Caesar will seize absolute control. Brutus and his fellow conspirators murder Caesar, triggering a civil war between the conspirators and forces led by Caesar’s best friend, Marc Anthony.

          Burge gives the picture a standard sword-and-sandals look, with extras in flowing robes flitting across soundstages crammed with columns and staircases, so the piece doesn’t really take flight until Burge moves onto location for the climactic battle. That said, he builds an insistent pace and employs enough movement in his blocking to avoid filling the screen with long stretches of static talking heads. Plus, with its scenes of assassination and civil unrest, it’s not as if Julius Caesar lacks for inherent drama. Among the supporting cast, the standouts are Geilgud, bitchy and grandiose as a leader drunk on adulation; Johnson and Vaughn, calculating and cruel as men whose ambition trumps their loyalty; and Diana Rigg, sexy and sly as Brutus’ wife. Ultimately, however, the movie hinges on the interplay between Brutus and Marc Anthony. Robards seems uninterested throughout most of the picture, though his performance gains vigor after the assassination, but Heston is on fire from beginning to end. Clearly relishing the chance to play one of the great roles, Heston attacks monologues with the same animalistic energy he usually brings to the physical aspect of his performances, so he’s magnetic even though his performance choices are obvious and simplistic.

Julius Caesar: FUNKY