01
O Lucky Man!
Why this pick
Anderson’s equally caustic, episodic assault on British institutions, combining deadpan farce, abrupt tonal shifts and a steadily more surreal vision of power.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1982 1h 56m GBR
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
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Britannia Hospital
ComedyDramaHorrorScience Fiction
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
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The Ruling Class
Why this pick
A wild British institutional satire in which aristocratic respectability, religious mania and black comedy collide with the same fearless bad taste and escalating absurdity.
03
The Hospital
Why this pick
Its hospital becomes a pressure cooker of bureaucracy, strikes, ego and public spectacle, delivered as a bitter, frantic satire rather than a reassuring medical drama.
04
The National Health
Why this pick
A sharply observed NHS comedy-drama that finds absurdity and melancholy in overloaded wards, staff rituals and the gap between caring ideals and institutional reality.
05
if....
Why this pick
Another Lindsay Anderson provocation: a disciplined institution is rendered grotesque through dark humour, social rage and a deliberate slide from realism into anarchic fantasy.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
A new wing at Britannia Hospital is to be opened, and the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother—referred to as HRH—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.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Jill Bennett
Dr. MacMillan
Brian Pettifer
Biles
John Moffatt
Greville Figg
Barbara Hicks
Miss Tinker
Peter Jeffrey
Sir Geoffrey
Dave Atkins
Sharkey
Marcus Powell
Sir Anthony Mount
Richard Griffiths
Cheerful Bernie