The chief characteristic of all Wiseman’s films — and the source of their tremendous emotional impact — is his instinctive sympathy for people who must confront the specific, human effects of vast, impersonal human social forces…

–Richard Schickel, Life

It is as open and revealing as filmed experience has ever been. You look misery in the eye and you realize there’s nothing to be afraid of… By the end we are so thoroughly involved… that tears well up, because we simply have no other means of responding to the intensity of this plain view of the ordinary activities in Metropolitan Hospital.

–Pauline Kael, The New Yorker