This is the stubborn labor obstructionism that the harried Potter must circumvent: Hospital workers are shown refusing to help the wounded or feed patients. The opening scene shows a new patient left to die in the receiving room, while nurses and orderlies take a tea break. Even the old Ealing Studios lampoon of Union demands I’m All Right Jack didn’t go this far. Many British critics were not amused to see Britain’s health system made representative of the ‘national dysfunction.’ And it is likely that the more progressive British filmmakers of the time (Mike Leigh, Ken Loach) would not like Anderson’s negative presentation of organized labor. The lampoon is elaborate, grisly and sometimes obscene. Instead of a general thesis on society, crime and morality, David Sherwin’s screenplay is a broad and vulgar, no-punches-pulled satire of the state of Britain. Little does he know that the interloping reporter Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) has slipped inside the Millar Centre with a spy television camera.Īnderson’s political-intellectual lampoon is as unsentimental as Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, but a lot funnier. Millar is also eager to present to the Queen another new creation that he says will solve all the problems of modern England, and the world as well. A latterday Frankenstein, Millar has a plan to assemble an entire human from spare parts. Some are willing to see patients die if their demands are not met.Ī new adjunct to the ancient hospital is a futuristic glass building called the ‘Millar Centre for Advanced Surgical Science.’ The high security research facility is run by the utterly insane Professor Millar (Graham Crowden), whose excellent PR skills have redirected tax revenues meant for the old hospital building. The workers want all the entitlements to stop. Ngami is a patient in the hospital’s swank VIP ward, where wealthy guests pay for special luxuries appropriate to their station.
THEME HOSPITAL TRAILER TRIAL
Angry demonstrators demand the surrender to trial of President Ngami, an African despot claimed to be a murdering cannibal. A rash of terrorist bombings overwhelm the hospital with dozens of victims needing medical assistance. Several crises pile atop the labor union obstructionism. Hospital director Vincent Potter (Leonard Rossiter) tries desperately to keep the reception on track while fending off crippling work actions by the union cooking staff, orderlies and painters. Her Royal Highness will be coming to celebrate the building’s 500th year of service in just a few hours. The main roles are actually taken by Leonard Rossiter and Graham Crowden, and they’re magnificent… but there is no central ‘hero’ we can root for.īritannia Hospital undergoes a fateful, fitful day of escalating tension and madness. Star Malcolm McDowell returns, but his Mick Travis is only one of a dozen featured players in a freak show of epic proportions, a kind of P.T. Nine years later came this wickedly dizzy satire of a contemporary England divided against itself, mainly along class lines. The second is O Lucky Man! (1973), a weird three-hour Pilgrim’s Progress in which the former student rebel Mick Travis tries to get ahead in a crazy, greedy world.
(1969), a mysterious, artsy ode to revolution. The mordant black comedy is the third entry in Lindsay Anderson’s ‘Travis’ trilogy, all of which were written by David Sherwin. It was mostly shown on cable television, after being chopped by half a reel. * Britannia Hospital didn’t receive much respect here in the States, either. It was no time for a challenging, outrageously critical satire of the status quo.
But Lindsay Anderson had the misfortune to complete his film right in the middle of Margaret Thatcher’s Falklands War crisis, which generated a major burst of national pride and patriotism.
THEME HOSPITAL TRAILER MOVIE
Talk about a movie years before its time - Britannia Hospital is right in tune with our world of 2020, where everything seems to be dysfunctional and society is in total rebellion. Produced by Davina Belling and Clive Parsons Hunt, Joan Plowright, Malcolm McDowell, Mark Hamill. Starring: Leonard Rossiter, Vivian Pickles, Graham Crowden, Jill Bennett, Street Date J/ available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99 The ‘visionary’ maniac spills more blood than Peter Cushing and Sam Peckinpah, put together.ġ982 / Color / 1:85 widescreen/ 117 (111) min. And the comedy has a wicked sting in its tail: Graham Crowden’s mad-as-a-hatter scientist has diverted National Health funds into grisly experiments with human body parts. A huge comic cast grapples with satire that reaches beyond cynicism to express total dysfunction. Union grievances cripple the functioning of a major public hospital, on a day when the Queen is set to visit. Britain in 1982 is a country at war with itself, torn by elitist snobbery and working-class revolt. Lindsay Anderson’s third ‘Mick Travis’ movie is a crazy comedy eager to overstep lines of cinematic decorum.
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