Ring Lardner Jr. (far right) with eight others of the Hollywood 10 charged with contempt of Congress in 1947
Robert Altman at the Cannes Film Festival, 1970
MASH B+
USA (116 mi) 1970 ‘Scope d: Robert Altman
USA (116 mi) 1970 ‘Scope d: Robert Altman
Hot Lips (Sally Kellerman) angrily to Hawkeye Pierce (Donald
Sutherland)
I wonder how a
degenerate person like you could have reached a position of responsibility in
the Army Medical Corps?
Father Mulcahy (René Auberjonois)
He was drafted.
And then there was…Korea, which flashes at the opening (at
the studio’s insistence) to distinguish it from the Vietnam War, which was in
full battle mode at the time this film was made, offering Altman’s own
commentary on the military experience, sort of his own cinematic CATCH-22
(1970), both films satirizing American wars, which were ironically released in
the same year. The director’s cynical
views are based on his own World War II experiences in the Air Force, flying
over 50 bombing missions in Borneo and the Dutch East Indies. Still to this day, this remains Altman’s most
popular and certainly his most commercially successful film, shot for $3
million, a half a million under budget so as not to draw attention or
unnecessary interference from the studio brass, who never really knew what was
happening, and grossing close to $90 million dollars, all but saving the
studio, according to Altman. The film’s
popularity spawned an extremely popular TV show (starring Alan Alda) that ran
for over a decade in the post Vietnam era, which used the same opening
helicopter sequence, theme music (without the lyrics), with actor Gary Burghoff
as Radar, and at least initially C. Wood as General Hammond, reprising their
roles for television. Altman’s son Mike
wrote the lyrics to the theme song “Suicide Is Painless” at the age of 14, and
reportedly made more money from the movie than his father, who reportedly made
only $75,000. Altman’s criteria for the
song was that it had to be the “stupidest song ever written” called “Suicide Is
Painless,” but found the task of writing stupid lyrics at age 45 too difficult
for himself, assigning the task to his son who reportedly wrote the lyrics in
five minutes. The song is now ranked at
#66 on AFI’s top 100 songs in American cinema, AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs. Many more people remember the television show
M*A*S*H (1972–1983), with 99 Emmy nominations breaking all network records,
without ever having seen the movie, where Altman detested the television show
(which lasted four times as long as the war itself), feeling it was the
antithesis of what he hoped to achieve with the film, which was questioning the
United States involvement in Vietnam, as America was never attacked or in
danger, as it was in a politicized, artificial state of emergency left over
from the rabidly anti-communist days of Senator Joe McCarthy that had little
meaning to the ordinary people on the street.
The politically subversive tone of the film struck a nerve
with audiences in the late 60’s when people were feeling rebellious and
anti-war, where the dark humor fit the times, much like the mocking tone of
Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) towards the Cold War. Movies with liberal, anti-authoritarian
themes were all the rage in the late 60’s, like Bonnie
and Clyde (1967), THE GRADUATE (1967), Rosemary's
Baby (1968), MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969),
Easy
Rider (1969), or The Wild
Bunch (1969), a time when the studios were still run by powerfully staunch
conservatives. To make a film like this
within the Hollywood studio system of the times took some clever subterfuge,
where Altman describes the journey as having escaped mostly unscathed without
anybody noticing, where he did his best to keep a low profile, as 20th Century
Fox was more concerned with their other big budget war movies being produced at
the same time, PATTON (1970), which went on to win 7 Academy Awards, including
Best Picture, also the 4th top grossing movie of the year, and TORA! TORA!
TORA! (1970), the 8th top grossing film, while MASH surprisingly topped them
both at #3, while also winning the Palme d’Or Best Film at the prestigious
Cannes Film Festival. The origin of the
film was Richard Hooker’s 1968 book MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, a pen
name for Dr. H. Richard Hornberger, a former military surgeon whose book
fictionally recounts the exploits of three insubordinate Korean War surgeons,
revealing how they comically resort to zany antics in order to maintain their
sanity during the insanity of war.
Screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr, a former communist, was one of the blacklisted
Hollywood
Ten during the late 40’s and early 50’s era of McCarthyism,
notable for serving a year in prison for contempt of Congress by not naming
names of other alleged communist sympathizers, dismissed by Darryl Zanuck, the
head of 20th Century Fox studios in 1947, where the blacklist was not lifted
until he as given co-writing credits for Norman Jewison’s THE CINCINNATI KID
(1965). His interest in the novel, as he
identified with the blasphemous nature of anti-establishment tone, prompted the
interest of the same studio that blacklisted him, ironically rehired by
Zanuck’s son, Darryl Zanuck, Jr. Supposedly
a list of about 15 directors (including Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Bud
Yorkin, and George Roy Hill, among others) turned down the project until it was
finally offered to Altman, something of an unheralded novice at that time with
a reputation for going against the grain of studio wishes. His work in television on the gritty
war-oriented show Combat (1962–63)
was notable for its anti-war flavor, which got him fired as the networks hated
it, so here he gets the chance to reprise the same subversive elements again in
a movie.
One of the film’s revelations is the historical accuracy
about doctors being drafted out of medical school, some after only a year or
two in medical practice, where they were whisked off to the front lines in
helicopters and placed somewhere close to the battlefront in one of these
emergency mobile hospital units. As soon
as their boots hit the ground, they’re thrust into immediate action where
they’re up to their elbows in blood, amputations, and death, where they routinely
worked 16, 18, or 24-hour shifts, with one doctor reportedly working 80
straight hours due to the continual onslaught of maimed, wounded, and dead
soldiers. Some of these medical students
didn’t even know where Korea was on a map, and knew nothing about the army, as
they had absolutely no military training, but their surgical skills were in
high demand in the early 1950’s. Because
they came from a non-military background, they tended to be eccentric,
non-conformists who enjoyed tweaking the noses of authority. This irreverence led to the tone of the book,
as these doctors didn’t respect rank, they respected competency. Always placed close to the front lines, as
that’s where the casualties were, these MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital)
units were constantly on the move, sometimes twice daily, reportedly as many as
27 times in 11 months. This aspect was
not depicted in the film, but it did show how desperately they needed blood and
basic hospital supplies, a point noted in Herbert Kline’s searing Spanish Civil
War documentary HEART OF SPAIN (1937), Heart
of Spain + Photo League Shorts, with the filmmakers living with a mobile
medical clinic and filming it in operation, saving wounded soldiers on the
front lines through blood transfusions.
Because of how valuable these doctors were, the reality was they
couldn’t take them out of duty for minor military infractions, as they were
needed to save lives. The Korean War was
the first use of helicopters to transport the dead and wounded out of battle
zones, as there were no passable roads, where the symbol of helicopters turns
out to be an interesting parallel between both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, as
the helicopter has come to personify both wars.
It was also the first war that routinely treated all wounded patients,
friend and foe alike, where the doctors made no distinction. One constant in the MASH units was lurking
behind every off duty moment was the arrival of more helicopters, where there
was a neverending demand for the services of doctors.
Shot on back lot of 20th Century Fox studios in the Lake
Malibu area, recently flooded just before shooting began, so the green foliage
was quite pronounced, giving the film what could possibly be a lush Southeast
Asian look, though in the background are the Santa Monica Mountains outside Los
Angeles. This is a curious little war
film with no guns, no battle scenes, and is perhaps more anti-authority than
anti-war, as the war itself is never in view, but instead features three
doctors and a continuous line of casualties, blending comedy and carnage, where
at the heart of the film are the bloody operating scenes that take the place of
the battlefield operations. Confined to
their tiny geographical area, this medical unit remains psychologically
confined or imprisoned by their so-called safety zone, where there are few, if
any, quiet or silent moments, while they’re also restricted by the
ineffectiveness of the military order and chain of command that seems to have
little plan or interest in actually winning the war or understand the
ramifications of any of its arbitrary rules.
In a Vietnam weary nation, where the parallels between the Korean and
Vietnam Wars resonated, audiences loved the outrageousness of it, expressing
shocking realism with scathingly dark humor.
Highlighting exaggerated issues of morality and sexuality, the film
shows the grimness of war through the scandalous behavior of the characters who
got through the war with the use of bizarre humor, which led to continuous acts
of rebellion, especially the two lead characters who are flown in, Donald
Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce and Elliot Gould as Trapper John McIntyre, two out
of work actors that resuscitated their professional careers by playing
perversely unruly surgical doctors that dealt with life and death every day on
the operating table, developing a mocking tone towards army rules and
regulations, which meant nothing to them, eventually building a community of
characters onscreen that exist in opposition to military authority, perhaps
hoping to have a similar influence with offscreen viewers. Gould especially seems to be channeling
Groucho Marx (“Say the magic word and win a hundred dollars”), where a gong
sounds after the joke punch line where a drum roll plays in stand-up comedy,
where the film is a series of crude bathroom jokes and barroom humor, the more
obscene the better, as according to Altman, there was nothing more obscene than
patching up these wounded young men and sending them back to the front lines
again, which is the true insanity of war.
14 of the 30 speaking roles were novices who had never worked on a movie
before, where Altman hoped their fresh faces would enhance the film’s realism,
as they could act naturally instead of offering a grand dramatic acting
“performance,” which tend to be overwrought, which is exactly what Gould
initially portrayed in the beginning and had to be toned down by Altman. And if you want to see what a perfectly
crafted, toned down performance looks like in an Altman film, look no further
than Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe in The
Long Goodbye (1973). As is typical
in Altman films, though not known by the actors at the time, there is a
constant mumble in the background with people stepping on each other’s lines
through overlapping dialogue, where Altman favors a more freewheeling,
improvisational style to rigidly sticking to the actual script. Ring Lardner Jr. was furious how his dialogue
got lost on the set, and felt sabotaged by Altman, though he was the only one
to win an Academy Award for his Best Adapted Screenplay, where Altman always
followed the tone that was established in his irreverent, wildly hysterical
script.
Both Sutherland and Gould couldn’t understand why Altman was
paying all this attention to the extras in minor roles when they were
supposedly the starring lead characters, questioning his sanity, complaining to
their agents and the Fox producer that they wanted Altman out, as they felt he
was an irresponsible madman who had no idea what he was doing, as there was
such a chaotic atmosphere on the movie set.
Little did they know how magnificently Altman creates order out of
chaos, as that is his signature style as a director, a reputation only further
enhanced throughout his brilliant career.
Altman tends to get everyone involved on the set, even the minor characters,
as no one knew who was miked or where the focus of the camera was during each
shot, so everyone had to remain on high alert, as if the camera was on them,
and it wasn’t until they saw the final edit that they had any idea what the
overall vision was for the film. In this
manner, a wonderful sense of camaraderie develops on the set, as Altman loves
to use an ensemble style where everybody matters. Altman is known for embellishing the
screenplay, in this case, making it more exaggerated and outrageous, creating a
total farce, where the only way to survive the madness of war is by laughing in
the face of certain death. For most of
the new faces, Altman raided San Francisco of all its acting talent, digging up
all these personalities, where actors are given such wide latitude to offer uninhibited
expression in their performances. In
order to pay for all the extras, Altman had to go through the script and give
each of them at least one line, as otherwise the studio wouldn’t hire them. One of the surprises of the film to the
participating actors was the use of loudspeaker announcements that are
interspersed throughout, like chapter headings, offering absurdly amusing war
commentary, announcing what movie will be shown, what food establishment is
suddenly off limits due to heath regulations, or a change in some military
regulation, often followed by some ridiculous sounding Japanese song, written
by musical composer Johnny Mandel who also scored the music to the theme
song. This decision to add a stream of
messages occurred during the editing of the film, adding cohesiveness to the
comical set pieces and helping to keep the chaos in order, where some were
taken word for word from Korean War Almanacs and military manuals, where they
also discovered (and used) an actual prayer in the army hymnal for blessing an
army vehicle, in this case the stolen jeep that both brought Hawkeye Pierce to
the MASH unit while also sending him back home.
One of the more farcical elements in the film is the meeting
of the two strictly by-the-book soldiers, Major Burns (Robert Duvall), an old
school, Bible-reading surgeon of questionable medical skill, ridiculed
relentlessly by both Hawkeye and Trapper, and Major Houlihan (Sally Kellerman),
brought in as the new head nurse, who finds the contempt for Major Burns an
appalling example of military protocol.
When the two devise a plan to write a letter of complaint for such a
deplorable example of army morale, they can’t take their hands off each other,
leading to an infamous bedroom scene where Radar places a microphone into their
tent so their sexual antics can eventually be broadcast throughout the camp
over the loudspeaker. Houlihan gets the
nickname “Hot Lips” afterwards, based on her own sexual ferocity on display,
while Major Burns is goaded mercilessly into a ridiculous fight, where he’s
sent home afterwards in a straight jacket under psychiatric evaluation. The sexual taunts toward women aren’t the
least but subtle, but are crude in nature and continue throughout the
film. While some find this an example of
Altman’s misogynist nature, it’s more reflective of how women are treated in
the military, showing the attitudes that existed then and now, especially with
those giant male egos involved. Despite
the exaggerated satiric absurdity on display, the distrustful, anti-authority
tone was reflective of the mood of the country, which was also growing tired of
hearing the endless military assessments of successful missions that only
sounded more and more absurd when so many dead soldiers continued to return in
flag-draped coffins. The script was
about the Korean War, but all the criticisms were aimed at Nixon and the war
regime. The studios themselves felt the
display of blood and guts was excessive, that it would be too grotesque for
audiences, but those were the scenes that provided the authenticity of soldiers
maimed and dying, which reflected the reality of a protracted war. All the attempts to take advantage of their
recreational time only grow more deliriously bizarre, going to ridiculously comic
heights, like Hawkeye and Trapper turning the helipad into a driving range,
wearing flamboyantly snazzy attire just to hit golf balls, where Trapper grows
annoyed when an actual helicopter lands, “Wish they wouldn’t land those things
here when we’re playing golf,” yet the extravagance of these outrageous stunts
are continually contrasted against the bloody carnage of war.
One other notable development involves John Schuck as
Captain Waldowski, the Painless Pole who provides dental expertise, known for
being the most endowed member of the male species throughout the entire Asian
front, where soldiers actually line up to get a peep when he’s taking a
shower. When he has an in-bed
performance crisis, which completely contradicts his Don Juan prowess, he’s
ready to admit life’s not worth living anymore, that the only option is
suicide. A black capsule is the method
of choice, suggesting a quick and instant (and painless) death. On the day of the shoot, Altman changed the
original plan and after a break for lunch, had an entirely new set design, also
an enlarged photo of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper, lining up his characters in a similar looking,
brilliantly staged scene, creating an homage to Buñuel’s VIRIDIANA (1961),
which also creates an unforgettable beggar’s banquet Last Supper moment set to Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” This scene is set to the movie theme song,
beautifully sung by Kenny Primus, who performed in a Broadway production of
Cats for perhaps twenty years, where Hawkeye has to convince the always likable
Father Mulcahy (René Auberjonois) to offer the last rites, who of course
considers suicide a mortal sin and an abomination. But according to Hawkeye, he’s not really
committing suicide, he’s only “intending” to commit suicide, drawing a
distinction, where a little church intervention might actually prevent the poor
soul from actually going through with it.
The solemn ritual is carried out with a great degree of gravity,
eventually lying down in a coffin, removing his gum, and washing down the
poison pill (actually a sleeping pill) with some Scotch, with everybody
bringing mementos to take with him to his grave. Bud Cort as Private Boone is deeply
disappointed, reminding him that “You’re throwing your whole education away.” While the method worked for Hitler and Eva
Braun, Painless has an altogether different reaction, requiring the therapeutic
services of an attractive nurse known as Lt. Dish (Jo Ann Pflug), where
apparently Mulcahy’s prayers were answered.
There’s also the infamous Hot Lips shower sequence, where
the group sits around and drinks martinis in folding chairs as if they’re
having a country picnic, but they’re waiting for the nurse’s allotted time to
use the shower, where as they arrive each woman is casually pulled away in some
needless conversation, leaving Hot Lips alone in the shower, where one side of
the tent is set up to collapse on demand, leaving the poor woman naked on
display in front of the entire unit, where she’s so infuriorated afterwards
that she runs to the commanding officer shouting “This isn’t a hospital, it’s
an insane asylum! And it’s your fault,
because you don’t do anything to discourage them!” Certainly one of the memorable moments, as
they do behave like animals, where it’s typical of the adolescent bathroom
behavior exhibited throughout, where this vein of ridiculous humor is the
lifeblood of the movie. Adding to that
is the infamous football game, where two military units make obscene bets over
a football game. Shot in Griffith Park
in Los Angeles, the opposing team is actually a collection of professional and
semi-pro players, including 6’ 8” defensive tackle Ben Davidson and tiny punt
return specialist Noland Smith (aka Super Gnat), who opens the game with a
touchdown, both stars from the Kansas City Chiefs, while the MASH squad enlists
the aid of Fred Williamson as “Spearchucker” Jones, another Kansas City Chief
defensive back player (both Davidson and Williamson also played for Oakland,
but Altman knows them through his Kansas City connections) in his first film
before leading a long and active career in the movies, starring in
blaxploitation films during the 70’s and 80’s, where he’s still working
today. The game itself, when looked at from
today, could easily be perceived as racist, where just the name “Spearchucker”
was a lot for Williamson to overcome, but Fred is always a cool dude and he
rises above the indignity of the occasion, as does the humor, which includes
players on the opposite team smoking a joint, one of the few mainstream films
of the times besides Easy Rider
(1969) to freely acknowledge smoking dope, and the first use of the word “Fuck”
in an R-rated film, where Painless makes a crack on the scrimmage line across
from Ben Davidson, telling him “You’re fuckin’ head is coming right off,” which
gets him run completely off the field.
With Hot Lips as a surprisingly enthusiastic cheerleader, putting everything
she has into every cheer, even as she remains clueless about football, the game
turns into a demolition derby pile up of MASH unit injuries, where Altman has a
chance to add more battlefield metaphors.
There’s perhaps no way to avoid the existing racism among the troops
that existed then and now, but Altman’s over-the-top portrayal is joyously
crafted, grounded in ribald humor.
While the movie features a single Korean character, Kim
Atwood as Ho-Jon (who learns to mix a perfect dry martini), though that is
apparently not a Korean name, and features populated street scenes in Seoul,
Korea with people uncharacteristically (and amusingly) wearing Vietnamese hats,
in reality MASH units were saturated by Koreans working as cooks, hospital
attendants, where they were regularly assigned to clean up afterwards and keep
the surgical areas and medical instruments clean. Also, nurses, like doctors, were equally
indispensable during the Korean War, though almost all were volunteers. While it’s likely none would have actually
been as openly harassed as Hot Lips, but the high percentage of rape of women
in the military, where more than 20% of currently serving female veterans will
be sexually assaulted according to the statistics from the recent Kirby Dick
documentary 2012
Top Ten Films of the Year: # 5 The Invisible War, keeps the situation a hot
button issue to this day. Nurses from
the Korean War era do report placing a Korean woman with a baseball bat in
front of the shower door when it was reserved time for nurses to shower. The last MASH unit in Korea, by the way, was
decommissioned in 1997. At the time the
film was released, it opened in New York during a January winter blizzard, yet
there were lines around the block to get in.
A theater in Vancouver ran the film for more than a year in an era that
proceeded the building of Cineplex theaters, so it was extremely popular with
all audiences, including GI’s, where the military initially banned the film
from playing in military bases, thinking exactly like Hot Lips and Major Burns
that it would lead to poor morale, but they quickly rescinded the order when
soldiers were leaving the bases in large numbers and going AWOL to see the
movie. The war was still going full
blast when it was released, where the bold and audacious tone just fit with the
times, expressing a little bit of the insanity in the air, a war film where the
only guns fired were on the football field.
The film also expresses the bittersweet emotions that overcome soldiers
when they’re informed they can go home, where there’s a guilty feeling about
leaving others behind when the war was still raging. As a result, there’s no real end to the film,
as the lingering war was not over. The
Vietnam War would not officially come to an end until April 30, 1975, the year
Altman released Nashville
(1975), a film some consider his greatest work.
By that time Altman had made eight consecutive uniquely original
visionary films that alone would have placed him among the great legendary
directors of all time, but it also established him as one of the few great
American auteurs with such a distinctive style to his work, where he continued
to make films for another thirty years.
