Last Night in Soho, now in theaters, marks Diana Rigg's last movie appearance. That British Giallo pastiche cum Swinging Sixties nostalgia-kick was the great actress's final project before she died last year, at 82. Rigg left behind an incredible career that spanned over six decades and several mediums. In honor of the erstwhile Bond girl, our immortal Queen of Thorns, and unforgettable Emma Peel, this week's Almost There write-up is dedicated to her.
Despite an Emmy victory and two BAFTAs for her TV work, Rigg never got an Oscar nomination. The closest she ever came was in 1971, on the occasion of her Hollywood debut in Arthur Hiller's Oscar-winning The Hospital…
The movie, which earned Paddy Chayefsky his second Oscar, feels a bit like the writer's attempt at doing Altman, MASH to be specific. However, when reading up on The Hospital's origins, whatever suspicion of mercenary copy breaks under the weight of personal rage. For Chayefsky, this was a project inspired by real-life turmoil, the horrific experience he and his wife had gone through in the New York City hospitals during the 1960s. He interviewed medical professionals and collected anecdotes and stories of criminal negligence, a culture of lackadaisical disregard for human life, and bureaucracy discombobulated. The result of this investigation is a pitch-black comedy that condenses the worst stories the writer heard, distilling them into an acidic satire about a New York teaching hospital rocked by a string of staff deaths.
As it happens, there's a homicidal maniac amuck, though who's the picture's real villain is up for debate. Medical negligence, not the deranged individual, proves itself the great serial killer in The Hospital and, as Chayefsky's script assures us, in real life too. At the center of the narrative, a lonely impotent man is forced to acknowledge such ugly truths. He's George C. Scott's Dr. Herbert Bock, the chief-of-staff whose days of hopefulness are a faded memory long lost. When we meet him, he's a divorced sad sack, considering suicide as he looks on and sees his world turned upside down, a temple of healing transformed into an apocalyptic circus of unfunny hijinks and death. In the depths of despair, he meets Barbara Drummond, the daughter of a comatose patient.
Played by Diana Rigg, this a woman more quickly defined by what she used to be – an acidhead, a flower child, a nurse, an idealist – than what she currently is. Who can say what the truth of Barbara Drummond is? She's like an unknowable femme fatale or perchance a no-nonsense 40s dame transplanted from the cinema of yesterday. She's an apparition of insouciant glamour with an unexplainable British accent and magnetism for days. Initially, we may assume Barbara's just a 1970s proto-manic pixie dream girl, but her purpose in the film is more complicated than that. The character exists to facilitate hope, hint at salvation, put forward moral questions, and lead the narrative into a dark night of the soul before pulling it out again, back into the land of parody. Still, what's most impactful about the woman is how her presence disrupts the farce, uncovering what hides beneath the gallows' humor.
Forty minutes into the film, we've only ever glimpsed Rigg in the background of scenes and seen her shush a nurse while completing some Apache ritual on her comatose father. Her first words are placating, delivered with a chilly air of patrician condescension. Barbara looks and sounds bored, giving us the impression that she's had to defend her father's religious idiosyncrasies to suspicious medical personnel many times before. But, as she says, the ceremony is harmless, spiritual rather than medical. It won't kill anyone, unlike some of the overworked doctors floating through the hospital's dark corridors. She's tough and captivating, an old archetype recycled and reinvented for the naturalistic rhythms of New Hollywood Cinema, infused with industrial quantities of cynicism. However, we only get to know more about her when alone with Bock.
In his dark office, Barbara seems eager to talk. Notice her over-articulation of the sudsiest words in the monologue, how her tongue wraps around incestuous syllables, and the promise of obscenity. It indicates a performative quality to Barbara, grounding the verbose script. The actress effectively justifies the theatricality of speech by making theatricality part of her character's psychology. Watching Rigg negotiate Barbara's sudden garrulousness is to watch a master actor solve a textual conundrum, a contradiction of tone that might have derailed her scenes altogether. Since these parts of the film, its most monologue-heavy passages, are a bit like acting exercises, it's up to the performers to bring vitality to them. It's up to Scott and Rigg to mend the barrier between their nocturnal theater of shared misery and the daytime lunacy going on in The Hospital.
The leading man takes a path of bitter intensity, a curdled expression of self-hatred projected outwards. Rigg is more unexpected in her approach, finding mellifluous poetry in detachment, her aloof demeanor, radiating intelligence, prickly sensuality. All that, and she's playful too, delineating witty barbs and self-assured attempts at coquettishness. Her line about wearing only ankle-length buckskins is a curious thing, not funny per se, but pungent with provocative intent. Their chemistry as a pair is odd as well. She challenges him. He, for his part, amuses her, if only for a night. It doesn't necessarily read as romance like one would expect. Instead, they seem like two weird individuals lost in mutual fascination, glad to irritate each other into oblivion while letting sexual tension explode in quick ravishments.
Considering all this, there comes another important question: Is she a middle-aged straight man's fantasy come to life?
Sure, but Rigg also makes Barbara into a distinctive presence, strong enough to sustain an entire movie singularly dedicated to her kookiness. In fact, while she's not in a lot of The Hospital, the actress makes such an impact that only a fool would dare to deny this is as much her movie as it is Scott's. Whenever she appears, it's as if the narrative transforms around her, and the audience's transported to an alternative dimension, a drama of clashing strong wills and desperate people rather than the horror show of a hospital falling into chaos. We leave this story mulling over how little we know of Barbara Drummond. Despite everything we've learned, one can't shake the feeling that there are galaxies left unexplored in her mischievous personality, marvels we can't fathom.
With a conspiratorial smile, Rigg makes one forget about a myriad of plot contrivances. She hypnotizes the viewer with blinding charisma and makes The Hospital better as she does it. What a star she was!
During the 1971/2 awards season, The Hospital won considerable accolades, primarily for its script. Diana Rigg was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe, while Scott got in Best Actor – Drama, and Chayefsky won Best Screenplay. However, while her colleagues saw the HFPA love translate to Oscar glory, Rigg was ignored by the Academy. Instead, AMPAS' chosen five were Ann-Margret in Carnal Knowledge, Ellen Burstyn in The Last Picture Show, Barbara Harris in Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?, Cloris Leachman in The Last Picture Show, and Margaret Leighton in The Go-Between. Leachman won while Harris was the likely fifth-placer. As for Diana Rigg, she was never nominated for an Academy Award.
You can rent The Hospital on Google Play and Youtube.