Robert Altman Study Part 14: M*A*S*H

If I were teaching a class on adaptation, M*A*S*H wouldn't be a bad example to base a lesson plan around. The story begins with a semi-autobiographical novel by former Army surgeon H. Richard Hornberger, writing under the pseudonym Richard Hooker. Hornberger's novel is an anecdotal farce, split between men-in-war antics and cloying sentimentality, with a dose of respect for the abilities of battlefield medics.

Most of the basic scenes that would end up in Altman's M*A*S*H are already there in the novel. But in Ring Lardner's script they're shaped and streamlined, and most importantly given a more irreverent twist. Hornberger reportedly never intended any anti-establishment criticism in his writing; that tone is unmistakable in Lardner's script. There's also a necessary economy, as in the character of Maj. Frank Burns: in the novel Burns is a blowhard and an incompetent surgeon who shifts blame for his own failings, as in the film. But the religious zealot who originally lives in the Swamp is a completely different character, brought up and dismissed within the space of a chapter - something that happens quite a bit. Every one of Hornberger's points seems to require a new character to be introduced and then shuffled off.

Altman then takes the script and breathes an entirely different life into it. Lardner had a longstanding grudge against the director over his "trashing" of the screenplay, ironically as it turns out given his Oscar win. That accusation turns out to be largely misjudged (unlike the case of Brewster McCloud), as most of Lardner's script is intact. It's simply not pristine, layered on top of itself, buried in the background or under a haze of anarchic slapstick, as Altman finds his ramshackle comic voice at last. More interested in making a case against Vietnam than in filming a comedy about Korea, Altman turns Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould into a counter-culture Marx Brothers, with this unspecified war in Asia a real-life, blood-and-guts Duck Soup.

What matters in the case of the film is less the dialogue, which Altman famously piles up in a cacophony of mumbling and simultaneous conversation; but the messy atmosphere, a no-rules hothouse where juvenile behavior is the only possible response to the insanity of war. He achieves that not only with the soundtrack but with the grimy, fog-filtered look, the distracted zoom lens, the abrupt cutting. The film cemented Altman's mature style, which would teeter between thrilling spontaneity and sloppy carelessness for the next couple of decades. Its unexpected success also paved the way for his experiments through the rest of the '70s (not to mention the series which would eclipse it, much to Altman's chagrin). Until his '90s comeback and late-life veneration, M*A*S*H remained Altman's most important and well-known - though far from best - film.