Britannia Hospital | |
---|---|
Directed by | Lindsay Anderson |
Written by | David Sherwin |
Produced by | Clive Parsons Davina Belling |
Starring | Leonard Rossiter Graham Crowden Joan Plowright Jill Bennett Marsha Hunt Malcolm McDowell |
Cinematography | Mike Fash |
Edited by | Michael Ellis |
Music by | Alan Price |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Columbia-EMI-Warner Distributors [1] |
Release date |
|
Running time | 116 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | $2.5 million [2] or $4 million [3] [4] or £2.5 million [5] |
Box office | $375,713 [6] |
Britannia Hospital is a 1982 British black comedy film, directed by Lindsay Anderson, which targets the National Health Service and contemporary British society. It was entered into the 1982 Cannes Film Festival and Fantasporto. [7]
Britannia Hospital is the final part of Anderson's trilogy of films, written by David Sherwin, that follow the adventures of Mick Travis (portrayed by Malcolm McDowell) as he travels through a strange and sometimes surreal Britain. From his days at boarding school in if.... (1968) to his journey from coffee salesman to film star in O Lucky Man! (1973), Travis's adventures finally come to an end in Britannia Hospital, which sees him as a muckraking reporter investigating the bizarre activities of Professor Millar, played by Graham Crowden, with whom he had had an encounter in O Lucky Man. All three films have characters in common. Some of the characters from if.... that did not turn up in O Lucky Man! return for Britannia Hospital. The film also features Leonard Rossiter, Joan Plowright, Jill Bennett, Marsha Hunt, Fulton Mackay, Vivian Pickles, Richard Griffiths, Arthur Lowe, and Mark Hamill.
The absurdities of human behaviour as we move into the twenty-first century are too extreme—and too dangerous—to permit us the luxury of sentimentalism or tears. But by looking at humanity objectively and without indulgence, we may hope to save it. Laughter can help.
— Lindsay Anderson
A new wing at Britannia Hospital is to be opened, and the Queen (presumably Queen Elizabeth II, but only ever referred to as H.R.H.) is due to arrive. The administrator of the hospital, Potter (Leonard Rossiter), is confronted with demonstrators protesting against an African dictator who is a VIP patient, striking ancillary workers (opposed to the exotic gastronomic demands of the hospital's private patients) and a less-than-cooperative Professor Millar (Graham Crowden), the head of the new wing. Rather than cancel the royal visit, Potter decides to go out and reason with the protestors. He strikes a deal with the protest leader—the private patients of Britannia Hospital are to be ejected and, in return, the protestors allow a number of ambulances into the hospital. However, unbeknown to the protestors, these ambulances actually contain the Queen Mother and her entourage.
Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) is a reporter who is shooting a clandestine documentary about the hospital and its dubious practices. He manages to get inside with the help of a sympathetic nurse (Marsha Hunt) and starts to investigate Millar's sinister scientific experimentation, including the murder of a patient, Macready (Alan Bates). As mayhem ensues outside, Travis is also murdered and his head used as part of a grim Frankenstein-like experiment which goes hideously wrong.
Eventually, the protestors break into the hospital and attempt to disrupt Millar's presentation of his Genesis Project, in which he claims he has perfected mankind. In front of the assembled audience of Royalty and commoners, Genesis is revealed—a brain wired to machinery. Genesis is given a chance to speak and, in a robotic voice, utters the "What a piece of work is a man" speech from Hamlet , until it continuously repeats the line "How like a God".
The Administration
Medicos
The Unions
The Media
The Palace
And
Robbie Coltrane, Patsy Byrne and Edward Hibbert had bit parts. This was the final film appearance of Arthur Lowe, who died shortly after his scenes were filmed.
Lindsay Anderson says the film had its origins in 1975 with a newspaper story about the "siege of Charing Cross Hospital, when there was a big demonstration against fee-paying private patients led by a union official known as Granny Brookstern. "This immediately struck me as absurd. If you stand outside a hospital and stop ambulances going in in the name of humanity you are involved in a wonderfully absurd paradox. The story got even more wild with accusations that Granny Brookstern and the Labour Minister of Health had themselves been private patients; and so I started building up a private scrapbook of newsworthy absurdities." [8]
Anderson said he was inspired by Amiel's theory that the only true principle of humanity is justice. "The man who would today say that liberty and equality are bad principles is a brave man but perhaps a necessary one since, unless they include justice, they are pernicious and self-destructive. That is at the heart of Britannia Hospital, though I hope it's not a preachy film but a parable. A parable is a heavenly story with an earthly meaning. I hope this is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning." [8]
Anderson did an outline and sent it to Lew Grade, who was not interested. 20th Century Fox under Sandy Lieberson signed Anderson to a two-picture deal, of which one was to be Britannia Hospital. (The other was to be Dress Grey written by Gore Vidal). Anderson arranged for David Sherwin to write a script. [3]
Sherwin said the film was not "about a hospital about all. It's about everything. It's not even a film that's just about Britain." [3]
Lieberson left Fox and the studio dropped the project. Mamoun Hassan of the National Film Finance Corporation said he thought they were "too shocked by it". [9]
After this, producer Clive Parsons championed the project. He raised $1 million from Britain's National Film Finance Corporation and $3 million from EMI. Hassan says that there was discussion at the NFFC whether they should support a film by Anderson, who had made a number of movies, but ultimately decided he was an "outsider". Hassan attributes the fact that the budget was raised to Parsons's persistence, and the fact the script had been around a number of years so some of the shock had "worn off". Nonetheless, he called it "a risk... a very black comedy." [9]
Filming started in August 1981. [8]
It was filmed at Shepperton Studios, using Friern Hospital in Barnet as the exterior of the hospital in October 1981. [3] Filming took 12 weeks. [10]
McDowell said he did the film just for his expenses, and no fee, because there was not enough money in the budget to pay his normal fee, and he wanted to work with Anderson again. [11] Mark Hamill also did the part free plus expenses when original choice Treat Williams bowed out. [3]
During filming, Anderson needed another $1 million and two extra weeks to finish the film. [3]
Anderson said:
The film ends with a question mark, not a solution, and people don't like that. They want to be let off the hook, and this film impales the audience on rather a large hook. I think that if we are going to find solutions, we're not going to get any help from God, or any pre-sold political notions. The big question remains whether we are good enough or intelligent enough to survive. [12]
It was released in the United Kingdom on 27 May 1982.
Most British critics lambasted the film on release, although Dilys Powell reviewed it positively, David Robinson listed it among his top ten for the year, and Geoff Daniel chose it as his film of the year. [13] Critic Ian Haydn Smith considers Britannia Hospital the "nadir" of Anderson's career. "Replacing satire with broad comedy, the film fails on every level in its attempt to critique the state of the National Health Service". [14] The film won the "Audience Jury Award" at Fantasporto.
Recent scholarship has attempted to reappraise the film in reference to Anderson's previous work, addressing themes such as spectatorship, politics and authoritarianism [15]
Britannia Hospital was released in the United Kingdom on Blu-ray Disc for the first time on 29 June 2020 under Powerhouse Films. Special features include an audio interview with Anderson, separate new interviews with actors Pettifer and Askwith, interview with film editor Michael Ellis and theatrical trailers. [16]
Chariots of Fire is a 1981 historical sports drama film directed by Hugh Hudson, written by Colin Welland and produced by David Puttnam. It is based on the true story of two British athletes in the 1924 Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian who runs for the glory of God, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew who runs to overcome prejudice. Ben Cross and Ian Charleson star as Abrahams and Liddell, alongside Nigel Havers, Ian Holm, John Gielgud, Lindsay Anderson, Cheryl Campbell, Alice Krige, Brad Davis and Dennis Christopher in supporting roles. Kenneth Branagh and Stephen Fry make their debuts in minor roles.
Lindsay Gordon Anderson was a British feature-film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading-light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered for his 1968 film if...., which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival in 1969 and marked Malcolm McDowell's cinematic debut. He is also notable, though not a professional actor, for playing a minor role in the Academy Award-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire. McDowell produced a 2007 documentary about his experiences with Anderson, Never Apologize.
Leonard Rossiter was an English actor. He had a long career in the theatre but achieved his highest profile for his television comedy roles starring as Rupert Rigsby in the ITV series Rising Damp from 1974 to 1978, and Reginald Perrin in the BBC's The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin from 1976 to 1979.
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Malcolm McDowell is an English actor. He first became known for portraying Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's if.... (1968), a role he later reprised in O Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982). His performance in if.... prompted Stanley Kubrick to cast him as Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971), the role for which McDowell became best known.
O Lucky Man! is a 1973 British comedy-drama fantasy film directed by Lindsay Anderson and starring Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis, whom McDowell had first played as a disaffected public schoolboy in his first film performance in Anderson's if.... (1968). Some critics consider this film one of the best British films ever. --> O Lucky Man! is the second film in the "Mick Travis trilogy", all starring Malcolm McDowell as everyman character Mick Travis, concluding with Britannia Hospital (1982).
If.... is a 1968 British satirical drama film produced and directed by Lindsay Anderson, and starring Malcolm McDowell as the character Mick Travis who appeared in two further Anderson films. Other actors include Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan, David Wood, and Robert Swann. A satire of English public school life, the film follows a group of pupils who stage a savage insurrection at a boys' boarding school. The film was the subject of controversy at the time of its release, receiving an X certificate for its depictions of violence.
Marsha Hunt is an American actress, novelist, singer and former model, who has lived mostly in Britain and Ireland. She achieved national fame when she appeared in London as Dionne in the long-running rock musical Hair. She enjoyed close relationships with Marc Bolan and Mick Jagger, who is the father of her only child, Karis Jagger.
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Nora Noel Jill Bennett was a British actress.
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Vivian Pickles is an English actress.
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David Sherwin-White was a British screenwriter best known for his collaborations with director Lindsay Anderson and actor Malcolm McDowell on the films if.... (1968), O Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982).
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