In addition to being obviously thematically joined to the other 1970 titles as well as the era in general, M*A*S*H marks the debut of director Robert Altman on the list. I’ve long been an admirer of Altman, though I don’t think I quite got the film when I first saw it as a teenager. Maybe I was expecting something more like the long running television series of the same name. I saw it again a few years later. Some of my early encounters with modern classics involve living nearby to the University of Dayton(Ohio) growing up. In my high school years I often went to their library when researching term papers as they had a more scholarly collection than the public library. On one of my visits, I saw a flyer about a weekend screening series involving many films I was curious to see. Soon, “going to U.D. library to study” became my excuse to see films. One weekend, they showed a plethora of Altman films because Altman himself was coming to speak. I not only attended all the screenings(M*A*SH, Nashville, and California Split), but went to see him speak as well as field questions and answers. I have no idea why he was speaking at a university with so little film cred, but I was grateful for the opportunity. This was before his resurgence(I use this word rather than “comeback” as it was a word Altman himself rejected. His scale may have changed, but he never stopped working despite riding various waves of popularity and lack thereof) with The Player. Most of his work was concentrated on adaptations of stage plays and he was talking about doing an adaptation of The Diviners but was meeting resistance as he couldn’t find financing unless he gave it a happy ending. I appreciated M*A*S*H more this time out though I had a hard time connecting with the other two. I don’t think I’d seen anything like his work, and the more I saw his films, especially on repeat viewings, the more I appreciated them. Conventional wisdom tells us that if you can’t get a film on its first viewing then the director hasn’t done his job. That’s sometimes true. But Altman is so subtle and naturalistic, there’s so much more to see once freed from the burden of following the story. I haven’t seen all of his films more than once, but I always feel rewarded when I do, even with a “lesser” film like The Gingerbread Man, a film I saw twice just a few weeks apart upon its release in 1998. I still think, not to damn it with faint praise, the best John Grisham film I’ve seen. All this baggage declared, I still was not prepared for how much M*A*S*H would impress me in the context of the list. There is nothing in any of the preceding 33 titles on this list to prepare me for the style of this film. Though Altman has said there’s nothing original about his form, that everything he learned he learned from studying the masters, when filtered through his sensibilities, there’s nothing like him. Though formerly blacklisted screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr. won an Oscar for his screenplay, the dialogue is mostly improvised(though some accounts dismiss this a myth, all interviews on the supplemental materials back this account up, including Lardner himself). Though Altman had been around for awhile, it was mostly television work and what impact he made was largely negative, not due to the work, but because of his style and his ability to alienate bosses. According to Altman, there were a few other big budget war films(including upcoming list title Patton) and his main strategy was to fly under the radar, in large part by working as cheaply as possible. No doubt this was part of the strategy for hiring so many literal unknowns in the film, over a dozen listed in the opening credits as “and introducing”(movie lingo for making their film debut). The fewer stars attached, the less attention he got, and, of course, had less of an impact on the budget. The cinematography, the sound mixing, and the spontaneity involved made it feel in some ways almost like a verite documentary, and yet the few obvious punch lines in the dialogue still ring true because they’re not delivered like punch lines. I could go on and on about this one, citing the brilliant use of graphic operating room scenes, without which the crude behavior wouldn’t make as much sense or underline the absurdity of an existence where the main characters spend all their time stitching up people so they can go out and create more death and dismemberment. I think I’m going to save more of that for my entry on Catch 22, because I think the two deserve side by side comparison. I should add that all my guests thoroughly enjoyed it as well, my father in particular remarking on how many memories it brought back. All in all, a nice way to spend Christmas.
On December 26 and 27, New York City was hit with something like the fifth worst snowstorm in its recorded history. So instead of taking my parents out to spend time with the city, we sat down on a snowy afternoon to watch Patton. This was the big winner on Oscar night, though a surprising number of winners, either on purpose or otherwise, didn’t show up to collect their awards. George C. Scott, in the title role, demurred deliberately as he found competition among actors to be demeaning. As noted in my introductory remarks, war movies in 1970 were implicitly about Vietnam. Roger Ebert, in his 2002 review remarks that the film “…was described by many reviewers at the time as "really" an anti-war film. It was nothing of the kind.” I see where Ebert’s going with this, but “nothing of the kind” is a bit of a stretch. Francis Ford Coppola, a name you’ll be seeing a lot in upcoming entries, wrote the first draft of the script long before it was produced and is given co-credit with Edmund H. North, who he never worked with directly. In his opening remarks on the disc, Coppola said, that in writing the screenplay, he took pains to appeal to both those who thought Patton was a genius and hero and to those who thought he was a right wing maniac. As a result, he came up with a work that combined those two sides brilliantly. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the film acts somewhat as a Rorschach test for political leanings. If you think Patton was a gung ho insane bloodthirsty hawk, well you’ll find plenty to back that up. But if you think he was a brilliant military strategist who was hamstrung by bureaucrats, well that’s there as well. He’s presented warts and all. In fact, its implied(in the world of the film of course) that the Germans respected Patton more than his own commanders, in the sense that in several scenes the Germans can’t possibly consider that Patton’s location could be intended as a decoy as they couldn’t be squandering such a tremendous military talent. I can’t help but bring up comparisons between this and M*A*S*H, as Patton definitely has his parallels with the procedural wonks Hot Lips Houlihan(Sally Kellerman) and Frank Burns(Robert Duvall). There’s also a similar dynamic in the way the two different approaches clash in both films. In M*A*S*H, those who insist on decorum and procedure are routinely mocked, ostracized, and in Burns case, literally driven to madness. Though Patton’s methods are treated with more respect in the sense that it’s suggested he whipped a lackluster army into shape, there’s definitely a sense that the audience is supposed to think he’s going too far. In the most direct parallel, he insists that all hospital personnel wear helmets. When it’s pointed out to him that they can’t use their stethoscopes, he suggests they add earholes. This nuanced approach allowed Scott to truly shine in the role. In a sense, though he is considered to literally be a hero, this lets Patton stand with the antihero tradition that suffuses so much of this list. I don’t know if it’s the combination of a young screenwriter and old school director, cinematographer, and composer, but this film looks and feels like an old style epic while constantly surprising with the substance involved. I found it especially interesting contrasting the visual style between this and Altman’s film. Though this was shot on many locations, most of the interiors felt, due I’m presuming to the lighting and setup, like a set. Altman’s film was shot entirely on a Hollywood backlot but felt like a location.
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