Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

The National Health Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 30, 2020

William Goldman, a screenwriter who certainly knew his way around the “power structures” of show business courtesy of having written any number of significant films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men (both of which earned Goldman Academy Awards), actually wrote about perceived power in productions in his deconstruction of one of the most calamitous years in Broadway history in Goldman’s intriguing book The Season. One of the chapters in that book dealt with the power structure of a Broadway production, in this case a little remembered musical called Golden Rainbow, which was the only Great White Way pairing of easy listening singing couple Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, and who together in Goldman's estimation held sway over the entire outing, for better or (in Goldman's estimation again) worse. Golden Rainbow was a musical version of the somewhat better remembered Frank Capra film which starred Frank Sinatra, A Hole in the Head, and I go into some details of Goldman’s pretty scathing analysis of the so-called “star power” of Lawrence and Gormé vis a vis their musical production in our A Hole in the Head Blu-ray review, but there’s a kind of interesting example of power belonging to a screenwriter which had a somewhat happier ending. In 1971, venerable scenarist Paddy Chayevsky was given absolute control over a project which ultimately became The Hospital, certainly a rarity in the annals of the film business, where writers regularly see their work tweaked, revised and otherwise chewed up and spat out in versions that quite frequently resemble original versions only in passing. The Hospital was a rather bleak “comedy” which posited George C. Scott as an administrative physician at a decrepit supposed place of healing where the entrenched bureaucracy seemed willfully designed to keep people from being healed. Chayefsky ended up winning the Academy Award himself for his efforts, and The Hospital remains something of a cult favorite to this day. Two years after The Hospital debuted, those wily Brits were at it themselves with The National Health, a film whose title actually notably contains the sobriquet or Nurse Norton’s Affair, a subtitle which hints at a structural artifice in the film whereby “real” events in a rundown English hospital are interrupted by scenes from a completely ridiculous supposed “soap opera” dealing with doctors and nurses, often in hyperbolic romantic interactions.

As pretty easily evidenced by not just The Hospital but a number of his other efforts, Paddy Chayefsky didn’t suffer fools gladly and he was more than willing to completely skewer the inanities of everyday life (and/or death, in the case of The Hospital). In that regard, he would have made a more than fitting counterpart to The National Health’s scribe Peter Nichols, whose play provided the source material for this film (Nichols also wrote the screenplay). Nichols also kind of interestingly presaged if only by a few years works by Dennis Potter like Pennies from Heaven or (perhaps more appropriately given its hospital setting) The Singing Detective, in terms of offering a structure with almost built in “meta” elements and which, in Nichols’ original stage version anyway, had an almost “music hall” ambience.

In this instance the “song and dance” interstitials one might see in a Dennis Potter outing are replaced with that aforementioned soap opera, wherein all of the medical professionals seen in the “real life” sequences are reimagined as overly glossy, evidently extremely hormonal, characters who seem more intent on aspects of their personal lives than any actual patients (patients are in fact virtually nowhere to be found in the soap opera, just one of several kind of cheeky artifices which also include all of the characters speaking in kind of exaggerated “American” accents rather than their native clipped British ideolects). There’s obviously a social critique aspect cutting both ways in this bifurcated presentation, as the “Hollywoodized” version of the hospital seen in the soap opera bears absolutely no resemblance to the real life one, this despite the obvious holdover of actors playing roles in each section.

Those actors are a wonderful lot, though, and provide a ton of color in what some Americans may feel is kind of hit or miss comedy (it’s notable that The National Health flopped on Broadway). Among the great performers who show up in both sections are Lynn Redgrave, Jim Dale, Donald Sinden and Eleanor Bron. In the “real life” escapades at the hospital, there are additional characters played by such greats as Colin Blakely and Bob Hoskins. Those supposed real life moments clash intentionally with the overheated soap opera elements which may strike some as only slightly sillier than the average episode of Grey's Anatomy. Whether or not that "contrast and compare" approach delivers a cogent message may be questionable, but the premise is at least distinctive and provocative.

The National Health Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The National Health is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Powerhouse Films' Indicator imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.75:1. Culled from the archives of Sony-Columbia, who according to some pretty brief and generic verbiage in the insert booklet contained in this release provided the "HD remaster" for this transfer, this presentation has a generally organic appearance but some variances in densities and grain structure. As can probably be made out in several of the screenshots accompanying this review, the palette is rather dowdy a lot of the time, something that would be expected in the "real life" hospital sequences, but which can also attend some of the supposedly more colorful soap opera elements as well. That said, the palette in terms of primaries (red in particular) does tend to pop better during the soap opera sequences. Some scenes, notably toward the beginning of the film, have an almost grayish undertone which tends to suck a little life out of the palette. Some of the brief outdoor material offers a substantially warmer and more vivid palette, as well as improved fine detail levels. Clarity and general detail levels tend to be better in the soap opera moments, perhaps at least partially by design, since so many close-ups are utilized. There are occasional signs of age related wear and tear, and a few passing issues like some minor lateral wobble during the Columbia masthead. My score is 3.75.

The National Health Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The National Health offers a decent sounding LPCM Mono track which frankly simply doesn't have much of a "wow" factor by design. There are a few florid moments like some quotes from Tchaikovsky during the soap opera segments, but otherwise this tends to be largely dialogue driven. That dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout, with fine fidelity but pretty limited dynamic range.

The National Health Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Jim Dale is hosted by Nick Pinkerton and gets into a number of Dale's rather interesting exploits (among other things, he's the Academy Award nominated lyricist for the memorable theme from Georgy Girl).


• Back to Health: An Interview with Peter Nichols (1080p; 23:45) offers the writer reminiscing about how his own hospital visits due to lung problems gave birth to his play and later this film adaptation.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 3:05)


• Image Gallery (1080p)

Additionally, there's a very nicely appointed and rather thick booklet that comes with this release, which includes cast and crew data, an essay by Laura Mayne, interviews with Jack Gold and Peter Nichols, a collection of reviews of both the stage and screen versions, some stills and technical information.

The National Health Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

My wife and I spent several weeks in England this past summer and we traveled quite a bit by train, where we were regaled by several natives about the "national health", with few British citizens expressing outright confidence in not necessarily the system itself, but its requisite funding by a government consumed by Brexit. Even without the exigencies of something like Brexit, The National Health makes a rather similarly barbed case to Chayefsky's The Hospital in terms of what bureaucracy can mean for patients. How that gritty aspect intersects with the soap opera elements in The National Health may generate some widely different reactions in various viewers, but fans of this really fun cast will probably be interested in checking this out. Technical merits are generally fine for those considering a purchase.