THE NATIONAL HEALTH
UK, 1973, 97 minutes, Colour.
Lynn Redgrave, Eleanor Bron, Sheila Scott Wilkinson, Donald Sinden, Jim Dale.
Directed by Jack Gold.
The National Health: a pity this film did not receive more publicity. It is one of those English comedies that cut close to the bone hilariously. This time it is a dumpy ward of a London hospital with assorted crotchety patients and over worked staff, material for comedy and pathos. But the film's verve comes from the interweaving of a TV serial (sleek, slick, cliched, affluent, Tchaikovsky crescendo background, American), Nurse Norton's Affair, with the grim realism. The actors, Lynn Redgrave, Jim Dale, Eleanor Bron, Donald Sinden and others, act in both parts of the film and the contrasts of characters and situations are very funny, very ironic, very satirical. Worth catching if possible.
1. The socialist overtones of the film for England? The implications of socialism and the National Health? The contrast with the TV programme, 'Nurse Norton's Affair'? The irony of the contrasting titles?
2. How successful a comedy was this? How funny? Why? How did this fit in with the dramatic impact of life in the London hospital? Themes of life, illness, dying? The satire behind the whole film and the points it was making? How successful as satire was the film?
3. What are the basic characteristics of comedy? Were these in evidence here? Humour and laughs? Satirical irony? Characters and caricatures?
4. How realistic was the film, especially in the ordinary hospital? Consider the various patients and the staff of the London hospital. Loach, the amnesiac alcoholic, his fear of hospitals, as the focus of attention for the audience and the centre for reactions of staff and patients? His encountering the other patients, his fears, life and death etc.? The character of Ash, lonely, his pretensions, his ulcer and basket-weaving, his loneliness and cheerfulness to the other patients? Dr. Rees, the Welshman, his past reputation, dying in a poor hospital ward, his reactions to the people round about? The old man dying in the bed and his bitter attitude towards life? The father of the family and his cheerfulness, the shock of his dying, the support he had given to the others, the amputee whose wonderful spirit was praised? The young man with the accident returning to the hospital? Nurse Sweet who was driven so hard in her work, Nurse Powell and the West Indian atmosphere of the hospital, Sister McPhee? also hard worked, Mr. Carr and the superintending of the patients, Barnett and his wheeling the patients around, shaving them, taking the dead away, his assistant, his wisecracks and irony? The matron and her cheerfulness and platitudes in taking the visitors around etc.? What insight into a modern hospital on the National Health did this film give?
5. How was this contrasting with the TV saga, 'Nurse Norton's Affair'? What point was being made in the TV programme? The use of the same actors, the contrasting beautiful hospital and corridors and equipment, the locations, the characters and the staff and no patients, the poses, romantic attitudes, dialogue and its banality, the music, Tchaikovsky etc.? The use of colour etc.? Contrived situations? How real was this as a parody of current TV programmes? What was being said?
6. How successful was the intercutting of the reality with the TV programme? Parallel incidents, parallel characters, ironic comment on each part? How humorous was this? How black was the comedy?
7. What human values were explored in the film? How jolting was the presentation of a modern hospital? How depersonalized is the treatment in a modern hospital? Could it be otherwise? Is the TV hospital a reality at all?
8. How successful would this satire be in making people realize the point behind it and changing things? Why?
