- While Robert Altman's great films all contain a certain measure of what I would label "organized chaos," MASH is a helpful reminder that his not-so-great films do, too. As usual, there is seemingly a lot of improvisation, everybody is talking all at once, and there are plenty of ideas being thrown around. Unfortunately, those ideas and the imagery surrounding them aren't nearly as good as they would later be in films like Nashville, The Player, and Gosford Park. As preparation for his later work, MASH was probably very useful to Altman. As a film, it could be a lot better.
- The basic premise of MASH is familiar to anyone who owned a television in the 1970's and 80's. Whereas I seem to recall that the TV show had a lot of good, clean fun with military hospital staff members "Hawkeye" Pierce (Donald Sutherland), "Trapper" John McIntyre (Elliott Gould), "Hot Lips" O'Houlihan (Sally Kellerman), and Major Burns (Robert Duvall), the movie puts them much more strongly at odds. Specifically, Hawkeye and Trapper John, along with the assistance of the largely incoherent Duke Forrest (Tom Skerritt), do their best to torment the painfully uptight Burns and O'Houlihan in ways that aren't always played for laughs. Maybe it was funny to harass humorless nurses in 1970, but the constant stream of sexual assault reports coming from the real Air Force these days hasn't helped that gag age particularly well.
- What bothers me most about MASH, however, is that I don't find it to be particularly effective satire. Obviously this film was intended to address the Vietnam war by portraying its earlier antecedent in Korea. As targets go, that one is pretty clear. The problem is, I never really understood what Altman's take on the war really was. If the general suggestion is that war is completely insane, then isn't this basically just a cut-rate (and decidedly less funny) version of Catch 22? If it's that everybody in the military is charismatic, drunk, and irresponsible while they're saving lives, then what kind of message is that? And how The Last Supper fits in precisely is anybody's guess, although that represents what is by far the film's most creative and lasting imagery. While I don't usually subscribe to the "you had to be there" explanation for culturally contextual art, maybe I was simply born ten or fifteen years too late to like MASH.
- MASH contains the credited film debuts of Fred Williamson, Rene Auberjonois, and Bud Cort! Now that I like.
- As far as I can tell, Gary Burghoff (as Radar) was the only one who went on to reprise his role in the TV show.
- This was produced by "Ingo" Preminger, who was Otto's brother.
