Paddy Chayefsky, who would later write Network, penned an Oscar-winning script for the satire The Hospital set in a Manhattan teaching hospital whose façade and staff both seem to be crumbling. George C. Scott portrays a beleaguered physician, a character far less in control than the five-star general he portrayed in Patton the year before. That earlier role had earned him a Best Actor Oscar, which he famously declined, and The Hospital earned him another nomination. Director Arthur Hiller toggles between comedy and tragedy, the real and the surreal to depict, in Chayefsky's words, "a microcosm for all the ills of contemporary society" and a vision of health care that looks frighteningly prescient.

This page needs visual enhancement.
You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page.


The Hospital was added to the National Film Registry in 1995.

Tropes used in The Hospital include: