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Robert Altman's Outrageous and Unusual Anti-War Film

© David Macdonald

M*A*S*H was Robert Altman's first, and probably only true, major hit. It helped usher in a new form of black comedy, an era of generally vulgarity in the movies, and a new technical style of movie making. I say all this because when people think of M*A*S*H, they probably don't think of the movie, but of the long-running TV series starring Alan Alda. The show has apparently eclipsed the movie to an enormous extreme; it's been 32 years since the movie, but only now, in 2002, has it received the deluxe DVD treatment. No doubt this is because in the same first full week of 2002, Fox has also released, along with the movie, DVD collections of the first few seasons of the TV show -- which debuted thirty years ago this year. I think that a lot of M*A*S*H fans who decide to view the movie will be in for a big shock. The first big shock is in the casting; the only actor who remained to do the TV show was Gary Burgoff, who played Radar. Everybody else is different. Donald Sutherland plays Hawkeye, played by Alan Alda in the series, here, and Eliot Gould plays Trapper John (played by Wayne Rogers in the series). "Hot Lips" Hoolihan is played here by Sally Kellerman and, in the most bizarre case, Frank Burns, a character who was depicted as a mere buffoon in the series, is played in the film by Robert Duvall, an actor who could never be described as a buffoon. There are also other actors who play many supporting characters, like Tom Skerritt, Bud Cort, Rene Aubuerjois, and Fred Williamson, and (befitting any Altman film) many, many, many more.

The nature of the storyline may also catch a few people off-guard. In a basic sense, the material is very similar to that of the show, but there is something a little more unpleasant about the movie's presentation of the material. In the movie, the story consists entirely of a string of episodes in which Hawkeye, Trapper John, and company reek havoc on all "proper" decorum while repairing the bloody and broken casualties of the Korean War, and some of the stuff they do to keep their minds off the horrors of war is particularly humiliating. A couple of classic examples include the sticking of a microphone, which is then connected to all the loudspeakers in the camp, underneath Hoolihan's bed while she and Burns are engaged in a particularly noisy act of passion. Another involves a bet between Hawkeye, Trapper John, and Tom Skerritt's character of Duke over whether Hoolihan is a natural blonde; the carrying out of that bet naturally involves a rather embarrassing situation. There are also many other equally tasteless acts and behaviour more fitting of stupid teenagers than professionals. This is supposed to be hilarious comedy? This is supposed to be the inspiration for a long-running TV series?

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