MASH (film)
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MASH is a 1970 satirical American dark comedy film directed by Robert Altman, based on the novel written by Richard Hooker. Centering upon an outfit of medical personnel stationed at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War, the film stars Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould. Robert Duvall, Sally Kellerman, Tom Skerritt, Roger Bowen, Gary Burghoff, Bud Cort and Fred Williamson are also featured. MASH went on to inspire the television series M*A*S*H.
Awards
The film won the 1970 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It was nominated for five Academy Awards and won an Oscar for its screenplay. It was deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected in 1996 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 1998, the film was recognized by the American Film Institute (AFI) as one of the 100 greatest American films; two years later, AFI recognized it as one of the 10 funniest American films.This film is number 17 on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies.
Style
MASH juxtaposes gory operating room procedures with rebellious humor; occasionally these two elements co-exist within the same shot. The plot is episodic, and is marked by Altman's trademark editing style, in which each scene contains several simultaneous or overlapping conversations, as well as his emphatic use of zoom.Cast
- Donald Sutherland as Capt. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
- Elliott Gould as Capt. John Francis Xavier "Trapper John" McIntyre
- Tom Skerritt as Capt. Augustus Bedford "Duke" Forrest
- Sally Kellerman as Major Margaret "Hot Lips" O'Houlihan
- Robert Duvall as Major Frank Burns
- Roger Bowen as Lt. Col. Henry Braymore Blake
- René Auberjonois as Father John Patrick "Dago Red" Mulcahy
- John Schuck as Capt. Walter Koskiusko "The Painless Pole" Waldowski, DDS
- David Arkin as SSgt. Vollmer/PA Announcer
- Jo Ann Pflug as Lt. Maria "Dish" Schneider
- Gary Burghoff as Cpl. Walter "Radar" O'Reilly
- Fred Williamson as Capt. Oliver Harmon "Spearchucker" Jones
- Michael Murphy as Capt. Ezekiel Bradbury "Me Lay" Marston IV
- Tim Brown as Cpl. Judson
Trivia
- In the director's commentary on the DVD release, Altman says that this was the first major studio film to use the word "fuck" in its dialogue, the word being spoken during the football game near the end of the film.
- MASH features the song "Suicide is Painless", with music by Johnny Mandel and lyrics by Mike Altman, the director's son. Ten years after the film's release, the song reached number one in the UK charts. The television show used an instrumental version as its theme tune.
- MASH was the original title of the 1953 film Battle Circus starring Humphrey Bogart, a film also about life in a MASH unit.
- During principal photography, Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould spent a third of their time trying to get Robert Altman fired. Altman later commented that if he had known, he would have resigned. Gould later sent a letter apologizing. Altman has used him in some of his later works. He has not worked with Sutherland since.
- In a few shots of the "speaker" at night, the moon is visible in the background. On the same night when these scenes were shot, American astronauts landed on the moon.
- Gary Burghoff was the only member of the movie cast to become a regular on the television series. But he was not the only cast member to appear in both the film and the television series. G. Wood, who played General Hammond, also appeared on the series, if only for three episodes. Timothy Brown was in both the film and the series (for a brief time) but played different roles in each: he was Cpl. Judson in the film and "Spearchucker" in the series. And Corey Fischer played Capt. Bandini in the film and played the guitar-playing dentist Cardozo in the episode of the series entitled "5 O'Clock Charlie."
- Gary Burghoff was born with a club foot and two short fingers on his left hand, Burghoff uses props to deflect attention from this: in Charlie Brown he had a baseball glove on that hand most of the time, and in the M*A*S*H television series, he usually had a clipboard in it.
- The movie was one of the first films to be released to the home video market place when 20th Century Fox licensed fifty motion pictures from their library to Magnetic Video.
- Three of the actors in the film have also made appearances in Star Trek related movies and television episodes. René Auberjonois played Odo in and also played the role of Colonel West in . John Schuck appeared as a Klingon Ambassador in and reprised the role in The Undiscovered Country, and he also played a Klingon Doctor in . Sally Kellerman had previously appeared as Dr. Elizabeth Dehner in the original Star Trek's second pilot episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
- In the DVD's audio commentary, Altman refers to the original novel as "pretty terrible" and possibly "racist" in a section where he credits Lardner's screenplay, despite his only using that screenplay as a springboard.
See also
External links
- [Elliott Gould remembers M*A*S*H], from the BBC website; the same clip is directly available [here] in RealMedia format
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