• M*A*S*H

5/22/21 (Sat)

Now this is how black comedy should be done. In Robert Altman’s 1970 classic, three male surgeons arrive at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) in Korea during the Korean War and proceed to turn life upside down. The macho nature of the film feels perfect given that these guys are working in the middle of a brutal conflict, as if the only way of fighting the insanity of war is with more insanity. (The film was made during the Vietnam conflict, the obvious reference here.) The injured keep coming in as fast as the doctors can stitch them up, and the juxtaposition of the men’s zany exploits with the gory surgical scenes highlights what’s really at stake here. The doctors have to develop a fairly thick skin; in one case, a doctor dryly demands the help of a priest who’s declaring last rites on another patient: “I’m sorry, Dago, but this man is still alive and that other man is dead, and that’s a fact. Now hold this with two fingers.” A nurse screams at one point that this is “an insane asylum”, and in a way she’s right.

Announcements over the camp loudspeaker form a unifying motif of sorts, ending with a cheeky announcement of a film called MASH with these very stars. It’s hard to believe reports that the majority of the movie was improvised given the quality of the dialogue, though Ring Lardner Jr. was reportedly incensed at the liberties taken with his Oscar-winning script. It will offend many groups, including:

Blacks: The camp is integrated to an extent, and blacks are shown occasionally in positions of power. When Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland) is barked at by a black superior, for instance, he mutters, “Racist.” And the southern hick (is there any other kind?) Duke (Tom Skerritt) is obviously being ridiculed when he complains about taking orders from a “nigra” after already having to put up with two Yankees. But there are some eye-opening comments that would never pass muster today, though the blacks in the film seem to shrug this off. Maybe they know that their rank or Army rules protect them, but they somehow seem more secure of themselves. Their black football star and fellow surgeon Oliver (actual football great Fred Williamson), for instance, laughs off his nickname Spearchucker by noting that he used to be a javelin thrower – well, okay. An officer speaking at football practice to an integrated team: “I just want you to know that we’re all the same here on the playing field. [pause] Ahem, officers and enlisted men alike.” When a black player complains to Spearchucker that an opponent called him a coon:

Spearchucker: That’s an old pro trick, to get you thrown out of the ball game.

Cpl. Judson: Well…

Spearchucker: Why don’t you do the same thing to him?

Cpl. Judson: What, call him a coon?

Still, blacks were no more immune from carrying out insensitive talk or guy play than anyone else in the film, and each seemed to be treated as one of the boys. It was an interesting mix. I wonder how blacks at the time felt about that (I can easily guess how today’s ultra-sensitive Twitterees feel).

Women: Nor are the women treated any better. A surgeon to one nurse: “It’s a good thing you have a nice body, otherwise they’d get rid of you quick.” The most obvious target is the new head nurse, the stiff disciplinarian Margaret Houlihan (a hilarious Sally Kellerman). Their disdain for her is clear right off the bat after she complains about underlings addressing Hawkeye by his nickname:

Houlihan: That kind of informality is inconsistent with maximum efficiency in a military organization.

Hawkeye: Oh come off it, Major! You put me right off my fresh fried lobster, do you realize that? I’m now going to go back to my bed, I’m going to put away the best part of a bottle of scotch. Under normal circumstances, you being normally what I would call a very attractive woman, I would have invited you back to share my little bed with me, and you might possibly have come. But you really put me off. I mean you… You’re what we call a regular army clown.

Two of the film’s most famous scenes involve the men humiliating Houlihan for her attitude: they place a microphone in her tent when she’s making passionate love and broadcast that to the entire camp (giving her the nickname Hot Lips – not referring to her mouth), and remove all the walls while she’s showering to test if she’s a real blonde, leaving her naked body fully exposed to the waiting audience. Their treatment of her does go over the top; there’s no clear reason why they disgrace her in the showers, for instance, other than their puerile bet. But she survives just fine and by the end is one of the gang, even becoming a cheerleader at the football game. In the end, Hawkeye acknowledges, “You’re a pain in the ass, but you’re a damned good nurse.”

Gays: One “well equipped” soldier, having failed to perform with a woman, is convinced he’s homosexual and decides to commit suicide. They solemnly give him a “black capsule” – actually a sleeping pill – and have a priest perform last rites. He lays down in a coffin during a bizarre scene that mocks “The Last Supper”, backed by the movie’s awful theme song “Suicide is Painless” (the awfulness was intentional – the director’s 14-year-old son wrote the impenetrable lyrics). Then they bring in an attractive woman to prove to the man that he’s safely heterosexual. (I thought of the later Cuckoo’s Nest, where an asylum inmate is cured by a similar encounter.) In another kooky scene:

Trapper John: Well, you know, Man o’ War, after they retired him from racing, they put him out to stud. And he had an average of about a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty foals a year, and he lived to be thirty-six. And then when he died, they did an autopsy, and they found out that he was a raving queen.

Christians: The religious Frank Burns is mocked throughout, including a prayer he conducts over a jeep. Hawkeye asks, “Frank, were you on this religious kick at home, or did you crack up over here?” The funniest moment is when his religion is about to give way to sex with Hot Lips:

Burns: God meant us to find each other.

Houlihan: [throwing open her blouse] His will be done!

Illegal substance abusers: Drugs are forced on several characters: (ingested) the unwitting Korean assistant in an attempt to keep him from the draft; (gassed) the rule-bound manager of the Japanese medical facility when he tries to prevent them from saving the child of a prostitute; and (jabbed) the star of the rival football team to get him out of the way. And plenty of alcohol and other drugs flowing throughout.

In other words, something for everyone to hate. Sutherland and Elliott Gould lead a pitch-perfect cast who all approach their characters as real people, which keeps the farce grounded in a semblance of reality. The real star is Altman, whose kinetic approach was in exact synch with the material. I’m not a fan of the overlapping dialogue that he overuses here, but he handles crowds with great skill and keeps events plausible within the world he creates. The elaborate work needed for the boys to raise the tent when Hot Lips is showering came off as credible, and the wild football game is the funniest on film since the Marx Brothers’ Horse Feathers. I was wary of re-watching this film after so many years given the general preachiness of antiwar films (fully on view in the subsequent TV series) and the tendency of one era’s shocking scenes to grow tame as they age. I needn’t have worried. A great film, then and now. (One complaint: why can these films not get a native Japanese to speak the Japanese dialogue?)