MASH

Time Out says
Altman's idiosyncratic career received a dramatic boost when he took
Ring Lardner Jr
's script (already turned down by a dozen directors) and turned it into a box-office smash. Dealing with the crazily humorous activities of a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital's staff amid the carnage of the Korean (read Vietnam) war, it shows Altman's stylistic signature in embryonic form: a large number of fast-talking eccentric characters, a series of revealing vignettes rather than a structured plot, comparisons of real life with media versions purveyed by the camp's radio, and semi-audible, overlapping dialogue. It's frantic, clever fun, but in comparison with later works such as Thieves Like Us and The Long Goodbye, its cynical stance often rings hollow; its targets - military decorum, religious platitudes and sexual hypocrisy - are too easy, and there's little of the director's muted, unsentimental humanism in evidence.
Details
Release details
Cast and crew
Elliott Gould
Tom Skerritt
Sally Kellerman
Robert Duvall
Jo Ann Pflug
Rene Auberjonois
Gary Burghoff
Fred Williamson
John Schuck
Bud Cort