M*A*S*H (1970) on Netflix
Two captains, Hawkeye Pierce and Duke Forrest, reach the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea. Helicopters bring in wounded soldiers faster than the surgeons can treat them.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.3/1083,717 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes85%
Trailer
Plot summary
Colonel Henry Blake runs the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, three miles from the Korean front, where helicopters bring in wounded soldiers. Corporal Radar O'Reilly answers him before he finishes speaking. In August 1951, the patient load has grown overwhelming, so Blake asks for two more surgeons. Two captains arrive for duty: Hawkeye Pierce from Maine and Duke Forrest from Georgia. Major Frank Burns, a religious man, is teaching Ho-Jon, a South Korean boy who works in the mess hall, to read from the Bible.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about M*A*S*H (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Robert Altman said M*A*S*H was the first major studio film to use the word "fuck" in its dialogue; Walt "Painless Pole" Waldowski says it during the football game, after football-sequences handler Andy Sidaris told actor John Schuck to "say something that'll annoy him."
- After a panel screened M*A*S*H, the Army and Air Force Motion Picture Service banned it from Army and Air Force base theaters because it "reflected unfavorably" on the armed services.
- Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould allegedly spent a third of principal photography trying to get Robert Altman fired; Gould later sent a letter of apology and appeared in Altman's The Long Goodbye, California Split, Nashville and The Player, but Altman never worked with Sutherland again.
- M*A*S*H inspired the CBS television series that ran from 1972 to 1983; Gary Burghoff, who played Radar O'Reilly, was the only actor playing a major character in both, and Altman despised the show, calling it "the antithesis of what we were trying to do."
- The film's theme song, "Suicide Is Painless", has music by Mandel and lyrics by Mike Altman, the director's son, who was then 14 years old.
- To attract audiences to the struggling M*A*S*H television series, Fox re-released the film in late 1973 in a 112-minute PG version, cutting graphic surgical operations, Hot Lips' shower scene and the word "fuck" during the football game.
- Because the film was made during the height of America's involvement in the Vietnam War, Fox worried audiences would not understand that it was set in the Korean War and requested an opening caption, with public address announcements serving the same purpose.
- When Altman realized he needed more structure for his largely episodic film, editor Danford Greene suggested using more loudspeaker announcements to frame episodes; Greene filmed extra shots of the speakers with a second-unit crew on the night American astronauts landed on the moon.
