BRITANNIA HOSPITAL

British director Lindsay Anderson's unsparing view of working-class and middle-class values in “This Sporting Life” (1963) and “In Celebration” (1975) is heightened with the anarchic, socio-political satire exposed in his allegorical trilogy, “If. . .” (1968), “O Lucky Man!” (1973) and now BRITANNIA HOSPITAL. In its examination of the absurdities of human behavior, BRITANNIA HOSPITAL is bolder, wilder and even more hilarious than its predecessors. Anderson attacks contemporary English life with a frenzied comic pitch, considering its absurdities “too extreme. . .and too dangerous. . .to permit the luxury of tears or sentimentalism.” The film received a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival and its unusual melange of farce and cynicism continues to both provoke and delight audiences everywhere. The Mick Travis character first created in “If. . .” so brilliantly by Malcolm McDowell now is a TV reporter trying to videotape the hospital's resident mad-doctor's experiments in creating new creatures a la Frankenstein. While assorted insane disasters occur within the hospital, the madness of striking demonstrators and terrorists is erupting outside. Added to the outrageous uproar is the awaited visit of the Queen Mother. Catastrophe!