Was slapping really the prescription for overdosed patients back in the 1960s?
shareI don´t really know.... btw I showed this movie in the library when I was working for secundary students, and this was the only scene who they really laugh a lot...
"Shoot a few scenes out of focus.I want to win the foreign film award"(Billy Wilder To a cameraman)
The doctor didn't slap Fran because he thought she was a bad, immoral girl. The slap was to jolt her system...to shock her and maybe to get her adrenalin going. She had taken sleeping pills and if left to sleep she would have died. So anything the doctor can do to "wake up" her system, be it slapping, lots of strong black coffee, walking her around for hours and giving her a shot of adrenalin, would help her live.
shareDuh! Really?!...
Talk about stating the obvious.
Don't know if slapping was standard procedure back then but one of his comments was right on target.Having worked in a big city ER for a long time I can attest to the fact that the doctor's "nice veins" comment was *exactly* what doctors and nurses think about patients (among other things).
shareProbably not, but they weren't in a hospital. The doctor couldn't let her pass out or fall asleep again or else she might never wake up.
shareYeah, apparently Wilder consulted real doctors for this and what was finally on screen was actually the more gentle of the methods they suggested. I believe it's mentioned in the Ed Sikov book, but it might be the Cameron Crowe one.
shareThe forcing of boiling hot liquid down into the mouth of a passed out person was tough to watch. Typical of films of that era. An ambulance would have been called long before that point, especially when he injected her.
There was a lot in this film that was unrealistic but during those years, Hollywood painted such stereotypes such as the married men having affairs, men slapping the behinds of women, and the ever overused slapping of someone in the face to snap them out of it.
I think that it served a couple of functions - one, yes, to help revive Fran, to keep her awake. Even with the smelling salts under her nose, she was still nodding off badly and the doctor was taking drastic measures to keep her awake. The second function I think was to underscore how harsh and ugly a scene it really was. This was not a cute and silly drunken scene where the drunk does funny things, this was a girl whom had tried to kill herself on Christmas Eve and whose life was hanging in the balance at that moment. Bud's reaction to the slapping spoke volumes to how ugly and unpleasant and tragic the whole mess was. He cringed, looked awfully uncomfortable and deeply troubled by it all, which, I think is natural for any feeling "mensch". Sheldrake would have worried about about little more than how this incident would have inconvenienced him.
shareRegarding the slapping Wilder said, "I had three doctors on the stage to whom I asked what one does with a patient who has taken 25 sleeping pills. They told me that to keep someone awake it is absolutely necessary that you slap them, feed them coffee and make them walk without stopping. They even told me: It is necessary to hit harder."
From Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder. page 303.
Well, I don't know if it's medically prescribed now or back then, but if I try to wake up someone that is OD'ing I'd certainly slap and shake them.
shareI thought the slapping was OTT
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