M*A*S*H (film): Difference between revisions

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In the midst of the [[Korean War]], the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital is tasked with fixing up the wounded. Two Army Surgeons, "Hawkeye" Pierce and "Duke" Forrest arrive on the scene with fellow surgeon "Trapper" John McIntyre. Defying all conventions, they decide to "fix up" the mood in the hospital with their brand of black humor. The plot of the film is made up of various episodes dealing with their escapades in the Hospital.

 

 

* [[Adaptation Distillation]]: The film took the novel's main themes, stripped out the [[Values Dissonance|uglier parts]], and came up with this.

* [[Attending Your Own Funeral]]: The unit dentist, "Painless Pole", {{spoiler|wanted to commit suicide, so they set up a mock funeral for him so he could take cyanide and die in a casket. The cyanide pills were fake, and the only dying he did was [[Good People Have Good Sex|in the Shakespearean sense]]}}.

* [[Berserk Button]]: "Would you say that she was a moaner, Frank?"

* [[Bigger Is Better in Bed]]: "Painless Pole" is the "best-equipped" dentist in the army. After Lt. Dish spends the night with him, she is still in a daze the next morning.

* [[Blackmail]]: When Col. Merrill breaks in on Hawkeye, Trapper, and Me Lay performing unauthorized surgery on an American-Japanese infant, they anesthetize him and take compromising photos of him in bed with a prostitute to keep him from talking.

* [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]: The final PA announcement at the end of the film, doubling as the credits.

* [[Catch Phrase]]: As in the book, Hawkeye's is "finest kind". Save for one or two occasions, this really didn't carry over to the TV show.

* [[Composite Character]]: Frank Burns from the movie is a cross between the Frank Burns from the novel (in which he's a Captain instead of a Major) and another character from the novel named Major Jonathan Hobson, a religious zealot who lived in the Swamp with Hawkeye and Duke before they got him thrown out for praying too much.

* [[Cool Shades]]: Hawkeye wears tinted glasses along with a [[Nice Hat]].

** "Painless Pole" could be taken to refer to Capt. Waldowski's status as a dentist and his ethnicity. Or it could be taken to refer to [[Double Entendre|something else entirely]].

* [[Expy]]: Apart from a few mentions of them being in Korea, the sets, costumes and props are clearly meant to evoke [[The Vietnam War]] which was ongoing at the time. This was intentional.

* [[Harpo Does Something Funny]]: Pretty much the whole film was improvised; the screenplay was just a template.

* [[Initialism Title]]

* [[Invulnerable Knuckles]]: Averted. When Trapper punches Frank Burns in the face, he appears to be in as much if not more pain than Burns.

* [[The Loins Sleep Tonight]]: What convinces Painless Pole that he's a "latent homosexual".

* [[Meaningful Background Event]]: While the gang are divvying up their winnings from the football game, we see a jeep rolling past the tent bearing a dead soldier covered in a white sheet. This was originally part of a (deleted) subplot involving {{spoiler|Ho-Jon}} getting wounded in action and then dying in surgery.

* [[Noodle Incident]]: More of a Noodle Insult. One of the opposing players in the football game calls a (black) M*A*S*H player a "coon", trying to invite an attack to get him thrown out of the game. Spearchucker tells him the name of the guy's sister and tells him "Use it!". The guy walks up to the line, and we don't hear anything but the normal background noise of the game, but the opponent suddenly lunges at the M*A*S*H player and chases him all over the field.

* [[Office Golf]]: Hawkeye and Trapper play an impromptu game of this in Col. Merrill's office.

* [[Running Gag]]: The camp's bumbling P.A. announcer.

* [[Shoe Shine, Mister?]]: Snippets of the song "Tokyo Shoe Shine Boy" are played at various times. The song is also on the movie soundtrack. In the film it is sung in Japanese, except for the words "Tokyo Shoe Shine Boy" in English.

* [[Suicide Is Painless]]: The theme song is the [[Trope Namer]]. [[It Makes Sense in Context]].

* [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist]]: Hawkeye and Trapper, through and through.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:National Film Registry]]

[[Category:Academy Award]]

[[Category:Films of the 1970s]]