Fifty years after its release, screed-writing screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky’s dark comedy “The Hospital” still has the power to make your jaw drop.
Released amid growing cynicism about institutions that Vietnam inspired and Watergate proved, with documentaries such as “Titicut Follies” laying bare the stark realities of American medicine, and “M*A*S*H” puncturing the TV-burnished image of doctors as “ministering angels,” “Hospital” must have felt like a kick in the teeth.
The ensuing decades have seen nothing that went this far, with only TV’s “Saint Elsewhere” and a few edgier moments on the soapier “E.R.” or comical “Scrubs” etc. even trying.
That said, the black humor in Arthur Hiller’s “comedy” doesn’t really start to work until late in the picture. And it takes the ears and eyes a while to adjust to any visit to Paddy Chayefskyland. Few conversations sound natural. Characters launch into speeches and others in the scene simply yield…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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