M*A*S*H finds dark humor in the chaos of war

Capt. “Hawkeye” Pierce, Capt. “Trapper John” McIntyre, Maj. “Hot Lips” Houlihan, Maj. Frank Burns, and Cpl. “Radar” O’Reilly — famil­iar names to most of us as they were the major char­ac­ters in the pop­u­lar and long-run­ning (1972−1983) tele­vi­sion series M*A*S*H. But before the TV series there was the 1970 movie star­ring Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, and Sally Kellerman — today’s Reel Classic. 

The set­ting is South Korea in the year 1951 in the midst of the Korean War. We find our char­ac­ters assigned to the 4077^th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (aka M*A*S*H). Two new sur­geons arrive at M*A*S*H in a stolen Jeep. We meet “Hawkeye” Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Capt. “Duke” Forrest (Tom Skerritt). They may be some­what insub­or­di­nate, prone to wom­an­iz­ing, and fond of pranks. 

The com­mand­ing offi­cer is Lt. Col. Henry Blake (Roger Bowen), an at times bum­bling leader who is often res­cued by his extreme­ly com­pe­tent chief clerk “Radar” O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff). Other mem­bers of the 4077^th include Frank Burns (Robert Duvall), who is quite full of him­self and not very com­pe­tent, Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Sally Kellerman), the head nurse, and “Trapper John” McIntyre (Elliott Gould), who fits right in with “Hawkeye” and “Duke.”   

Hawkeye and Duke are assigned to share a tent with Frank Burns, but quick­ly learn that they can­not tol­er­ate him (nor he them). They man­age to get Lt. Col. Blake to reas­sign Frank to anoth­er tent and wel­come “Trapper John” to the “Swamp,” their nick­name for their tent. The three become known as the “Swampmen.”

We learn that Frank Burns and Hot Lips are hav­ing an affair, and the Swampmen, with the assis­tance of Radar, slip a micro­phone into the tent of Hot Lips — and the pas­sion between her and Frank is broad­cast over the camp’s pub­lic address sys­tem. The inci­dent leads to a con­fronta­tion between Frank and Hawkeye with Frank then being referred for a psy­chi­atric evaluation. 

We fol­low our char­ac­ters through­out a vari­ety of sce­nar­ios. M*A*S*H is episod­ic in its pre­sen­ta­tion, and oth­er events include the unit’s den­tist, Capt. “Painless” Waldowski, con­tem­plat­ing sui­cide, Hawkeye and Trapper John’s trip to Japan to per­form surgery, and a foot­ball game orga­nized by Lt. Col. Blake and Gen. Hammond of the 325^th Evac Hospital. 

Appearing as play­ers in this game are famous pro foot­ballers Fran Tarkenton and Johnny Unitas. 

Though the set­ting is the war in Korea in 1951, direc­tor Robert Altman want­ed to give the film a sub­text relat­ing to the cur­rent war at that time in Vietnam. Initially he had lit­tle ref­er­ence to South Korea in the film, but the stu­dio insist­ed that he iden­ti­fy the set­ting as Korea. The open­ing sequence iden­ti­fies the set­ting as South Korea. 

Altman saw the film as an anti-war state­ment and much of the coun­try at the time was against the con­tin­ued con­flict in Vietnam. 

The film was adapt­ed from the 1968 nov­el MASH:  A Novel About Three Army Doctors writ­ten by Richard Hooker. It was adapt­ed for the screen by famous writer Ring Lardner Jr. However, a good bit of the dia­logue, about 80% accord­ing to Tom Skerritt, was impro­vised. Some of the actors in the film had no pre­vi­ous movie or tele­vi­sion expe­ri­ence, but were folks Altman found in var­i­ous impro­vi­sa­tion­al clubs. In the open­ing cred­its 13 of the 25 actors iden­ti­fied have the word “intro­duc­ing” before their name. 

Partly because of the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the tele­vi­sion series, the theme song from M*A*S*H, “Suicide is Painless,” is very well known. The music was writ­ten by Johnny Mandel, but inter­est­ing­ly the lyrics were writ­ten by Robert Altman’s four­teen-year-old son, Mike Altman. Robert Altman was paid $75,000 to direct the film. His son, because of the long-run­ning TV show and syn­di­ca­tion, has made $2 mil­lion for his efforts. 

As men­tioned above, a good deal of the dia­logue was impro­vised, and a lot of atten­tion went to the sup­port­ing cast. This did not sit well with Elliott Gould or Donald Sutherland. They both felt that they were not being giv­en enough atten­tion. They approached stu­dio exec­u­tives and asked that Altman be fired as direc­tor, unbe­knownst to Altman. The stu­dio refused, and after the film was released and received var­i­ous acco­lades, Elliott Gould con­fessed to Altman what he and Sutherland had done. In an inter­view in 2009 Gould stat­ed, “I think that, in hind­sight, Donald and I were two elit­ist, arro­gant actors who real­ly weren’t get­ting Altman’s genius.” 

Interestingly, M*A*S*H was one of two films released in 1970 that were satires of American wars. The oth­er was Catch-22, set dur­ing World War II and based on the nov­el by author Joseph Heller. It was direct­ed by Mike Nichols and starred Alan Arkin and Martin Balsam. Upon the release of both films, expec­ta­tions were that Mike Nichols’ effort would be the more suc­cess­ful, espe­cial­ly after his suc­cess with the pre­vi­ous film The Graduate (1967). However, M*A*S*H was the more suc­cess­ful, lead­ing Altman to hang a ban­ner in his office that read “Caught-22.” 

Upon its release M*A*S*H earned $41 mil­lion in 1970 and became the sec­ond high­est gross­ing com­e­dy of all time. And, it was the third high­est gross­ing film of the year, with Love Story and Airport lead­ing the way. 

Critics’ reviews were very favorable. 

Pauline Kael was very pos­i­tive in her review: “MASH is a mar­velous­ly unsta­ble com­e­dy, a tough, fun­ny, and sophis­ti­cat­ed bur­lesque of mil­i­tary atti­tudes that is at the same time a tale of chival­ry. It’s a sick joke, but it’s also gen­er­ous and roman­tic — an errat­ic episod­ic film, full of the plea­sures of the unex­pect­ed . . . I don’t know when I’ve had such a good time at a movie.” 

The crit­ic for The Hollywood Reporter described it as “the finest American com­e­dy since Some Like It Hot.” The crit­ic for Time wrote: “M*A*S*H, one of America’s fun­ni­est bloody films, is also one of its blood­i­est fun­ny films.” 

M*A*S*H received five Academy Award nom­i­na­tions, includ­ing Best Picture, Best Director (Robert Altman), Best Supporting Actress (Sally Kellerman), Best Screenplay — Based on Material from Another Medium (Ring Lardner Jr.) and Best Film Editing. It won the Best Screenplay Oscar. The orig­i­nal music score writ­ten by Johnny Mandel also received a Grammy nomination. 

The American Film Institute in 2007 ranked M*A*S*H at #54 on their list of Greatest Movies of All Time. Steven Schneider includes it in his “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.” Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus states:  “Bold, time­ly, sub­ver­sive, and above all fun­ny, M*A*S*H remains a high point in Robert Altman’s dis­tin­guished fil­mog­ra­phy.” In 1996 it was select­ed for preser­va­tion in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. 

As men­tioned above, the film spawned the tele­vi­sion series of the same name that became one of the most pop­u­lar shows of its time and remains pop­u­lar in reruns today. Gary Burghoff, who played Radar O’Reilly, was the only actor to car­ry over into the TV series. 

Sylvester Stallone made one of his ear­li­est film appear­ances in this film. He appears as a sol­dier sit­ting at a table hav­ing lunch about ten min­utes into the film. He did not receive cred­it in the film and was about six years away from the fame Rocky would bring him.

Another famil­iar face is that of Bud Cort. He is seen as Private Lorenzo Boone. He would find fame the fol­low­ing year star­ring with Ruth Gordon in the cult clas­sic Harold and Maude. 

The Internet Movie Database rates M*A*S*H at 7.3 of 10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 86% and an Audience Score of 82%. I could find no free stream­ing sites, but there is a copy of the DVD on the shelf at the Clark County Public Library. 

I’ll fin­ish with a quote from the review of Roger Ebert writ­ing for the Chicago Sun-Times:   

“Most come­dies want us to laugh at things that aren’t real­ly fun­ny; in this one we laugh pre­cise­ly because they’re not fun­ny. We laugh, that we may not cry . . . We can take the unusu­al­ly high gore-lev­el in M*A*S*H because it is orig­i­nal­ly part of the movie’s log­ic. If the sur­geons didn’t have to face the dai­ly list of maimed and muti­lat­ed bod­ies, none of the rest of their lives would make any sense . . . But none of this phi­los­o­phy comes close to the insane log­ic of M*A*S*H, which is achieved through a pecu­liar mar­riage of cin­e­matog­ra­phy, act­ing, direct­ing, and writ­ing. The movie depends upon tim­ing and tone to be fun­ny . . . One of the rea­sons M*A*S*H is so fun­ny is that it’s so desperate.” 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from sources includ­ing the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.