ABSTRACT
In films, a hospital can be just a hospital; or it can be a more symbolic space, a forum for the debate about the health or otherwise of the body politic – a place where some of society's current concerns manifest themselves. Whereas The Hospital took place near the out-skirts of a conurbation called Believable, its exaggeration and outcry rooted in a realistic tradition, Britannia Hospital is situated well outside that city's limits. In place of what one critic called the 'speechifying' of The Hospital, wherein people are constantly making pronouncements that seem to be aimed at the audience as much as to the other characters, the dialogue in Syndromes and a Century proceeds almost as if the cinema auditorium does not exist. One should recall FD Roosevelt's line about having nothing to fear but fear itself, and guard against the habitual desire to ascribe simple cause-and-effect-type explanations to everything that happens on a cinema screen.
