Best movie of this year hands down!

Wonderful character development!

Very Cool!!!

Best movie ever!

The movie has its flaws but script by Chayefsky elevates this to a great commentary on the modern organisation.

Schizophrenic film that can't decide whether it's Playhouse 90 or Airplane!. In one corner are Scott and Chayevsky making with the intense psychological realism and some really powerful moments; in the other is chaotic urban hospital laboring at zany gallows humor with a few scattered laughs. In between is director Hiller hoping for single workable whole. Result is awkward pastiche that doesn't live up to super-rich potential. Film is object lesson in how miscasting of even top-notch talent can produce disappointment. I keep wishing gifted amateurs like Zucker Bros. & Jim Abrams had gotten hold of idea first. Sure, Scott is great actor, but he's so authentic he overwhelms ambient efforts at satire; yes, Chayevsky gets off some good lines, but keeps piling on the prose long after it's peaked out. What the movie really needs are more sight gags and a lot less talky angst. In short, let the visuals carry the message -- something word master Chayevsky could never allow. My advice: once hippie chick Rigg starts bragging about Scott's restored virility, switch off, because it's a downhill ride from there.

This film has George C. Scott doing some fine, fine acting. Diana Rigg, while beautiful, not so much. But then her character is written as sort of "out there" so maybe it's me, not her. Scott's sometimes ranting, sometimes musing, sometimes defeated, sometimes angst-ridden, sometimes power-boss role allows his vast range to shine. The script may be a gem, or it may be a problem. There seems to be some disagreement about that in previous comments, and I can see both sides. The direction was unobtrusive, and the cinematography was a bit claustrophobic, but almost certainly deliberately so. The ending makes the film seem pointless, but I think that was exactly the point. Check it out.

The Hospital is a movie that was made ahead of its time. This film, produced by screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, who gave us the Oscar-Winning film, "Network", deals with overworked staff, gross incompetence, and bureaucratic corruption at a large conglomerate hospital in Manhattan. George C. Scott, in a superb performance as the head physician, is driven to alcoholism and a death-wish, as he tries to recover from a divorce, throwing his son out of the house, and worst of all, a medical facility where corruption and incompetence take precedence over caring and healing of the sick and injured.Mr. Scott makes the movie his own, and viewers will be shocked at what they observe at this medical establishment. You can feel the "pain" (pun intended) of what this hospital has done to him. The vivid images of this hospital's incompetence are so vivid and dramatically powerful that you may find yourself laughing and being deeply disturbed from scene to scene.If only the film had stayed with that premise in a documentary style fashion as it starts out, this picture would be brilliant. Unfortunately, there is a sub-plot of Scott falling for the daughter of a senile patient. The patient has been murdering people at the hospital. This is where credibility of the picture becomes strained. The romantic dialog scenes add nothing to the picture, and the mental patient, posing as a doctor, I found to be totally unbelievable. A simple security call and records check should have prevented the senile patient from doing the killings. It takes almost the whole movie, before security people are brought into the film to get the patient out of the hospital. I could not see ONE PERSON doing that much damage, even as corrupt as this hospital is.Furthermore, George C Scott's character is "overworked" (another pun intended) because the script has too many things happening at once. For example, within a period of 20 minutes, you could have as many as 20 different doctors accused and denying what they should have done or didn't do. With the nurses and aids, it's the same story. Someone's chart was read wrong, someone was given the wrong medication and died, the doctor operated on the wrong patient, than another doctor does the same thing, blaming a third nurse who was not on call because the second nurse who was supposed to be admitting the patient was on her coffee break. There is also a lot of subtle, dark humor with the same messages of incompetence and corruption being fed to the viewer.This repetition of medical ineptness is unforgettable. However, the murder subplot is a distraction more than a help to this movie. When the focus of this film is on the incompetence of the staff and Scott's reactions to this, you are glued to the screen. But the conversations between Scott and the mad patient's daughter force the film into a mystery type "Who Done it?" scenario that seriously hurts the quality of the movie. When the loony patient is revealing how he did the killings, I wondered the following: Why did the producers need the "find the killer" mad-patient sub-plot? I think the only point of Scott's character having a relationship with the senile patient's daughter, was to give him anybody with whom to communicate. The Hospital should have maintained its scathing indictment of the medical profession by removing the love-interest and mad patient scenes. It should have focused on the incompetent B.S within its walls more frequently. In an era where this movie could have been phenomenal, the sub-plot stories make the film very good instead of the great masterpiece it could have been.