M*A*S*H

Dir: Robert Altman

1970

*****

I've always been a bit love/hate when it comes to the films of Robert Altman but with his 1970 classic M*A*S*H I can find nothing to hate. The story is based on the semi-autobiographic fiction of Richard Hooker. It lead to a series of books, plays and a successful television series that ran for nearly a decade. A good war film is an anti-war film and Altman's adaptation of Hooker's work is authentically satirical and dripping in black comedy. It was written for the screen by the great Ring Lardner, Jr., a fierce left-wing writer and famous for being one of the Hollywood 10 who were charged with contempt of Congress in 1947 during the red scare, the perfect person to adapt Hooker's political and comedic opinion. The film takes place during the Korean War and M*A*S*H stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. The characters are all army doctors, recruited to serve injured solders. Although set during the Korean War that ended in 1953, the subtext is clearly about the Vietnam War which was in full swing at the time the film was made and during its release. The characters are fictional but the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital depicted in the film is loosely based on the historic 8055th MASH unit and Donald Sutherland's character Hawkeye Pierce is based on the real life doctor Hornberger who served there. Ring Lardner, Jr's screenplay is different from the original novel, Altman has described the novel as "pretty terrible" and somewhat "racist" (the only major black character has the nickname "Spearchucker"). He claims that the screenplay was used only as a springboard. While some improvisation occurs in the film and Altman changed the order of major sequences, most sequences are in the screenplay. The filming process was difficult because of tensions between the director and his cast. During principal photography, Sutherland and Gould allegedly spent a third of their time trying to get Altman fired, although this has been disputed. Altman, relatively new to the filmmaking establishment at that time, lacked the credentials to justify his unorthodox filmmaking process and had a history of turning down work rather than creating a poor-quality product. Altman: "I had practice working for people who don't care about quality, and I learned how to sneak it in." Altman later commented that if he had known about Gould and Sutherland's protests, he would have resigned. Gould later sent a letter of apology, and he and Altman worked together in a further four films (The Long Goodbye (1973), California Split (1974), Nashville (1975) and The Player (1992)), but he never worked with Sutherland again. It's brilliant but I still can't put my finger on what makes it work, because everything about it suggests it shouldn't. It's erratic, jumpy and often hard to follow, you just have to dive in and hang on as best you can. The cast is outstanding; Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, René Auberjonois, Gary Burghoff, Roger Bowen, Michael Murphy, Fred Williamson (in his debut after retiring from professional football) and Tom Skerritt are brilliant but it is the chemistry and comradery between Donald Sutherland's Hawkeye and Elliott Gould's Trapper John McIntyre that makes the film what it is. Their jokes and engagement in humorous hijinks are hilarious and are a complete contrast to the horrors that are unfolding around them. It gives the film that darkly humour edge that makes you laugh but also makes you quite sad inside as the horror resonates behind the comedy. It's great writing but the performance is everything, especially when, as Tom Skerritt recalled in later interviews, that the dialogue was about 80% improvised. In order to create a different kind of atmosphere, Altman cast some of the parts from improvisational clubs who had no previous movie experience. Only a few loudspeaker announcements were used in the original cut but when Altman realized he needed more structure to his largely episodic film, editor Danford Greene suggested using more loudspeaker announcements to frame different episodes of the story. Greene took a second-unit crew and filmed additional shots of the speakers, it's now impossible to think of the film without them, it’s amazing that they were never meant to be there originally. Another memorable part of the film was the infamous 'Suicide is painless' theme song. It tells you everything you need to know about the tone of the finished film and has a similar effect. Mike Altman, Robert Altman's 14-year-old son, wrote the lyrics to the theme song at his father's request. Interestingly, because of its inclusion in the subsequent TV series, he continued to get residuals throughout its run and syndication. So while his father was paid $75,000 for directing the film, Mike eventually made about $2,000,000 purely from song royalties. In 1996, it was deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry and it consistently tops best comedy lists and is regarded as one of the best war films of all time. Altman's films are always hit or miss and his style won't appeal to everyone but M*A*S*H is a classic, something special and pretty much faultless.