MASH (stylized as M*A*S*H on the film's poster and art) is a 1970 American satirical black comedy film directed by Robert Altman and written by Ring Lardner, Jr., based on Richard Hooker's novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. It is the only feature film in the M*A*S*H franchise and became one of the biggest films of the early 1970s for 20th Century Fox.
The film depicts a unit of medical personnel stationed at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) during the Korean War; the subtext is about the Vietnam War.[4] It stars Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt and Elliott Gould, with Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, René Auberjonois, Gary Burghoff, Roger Bowen, Michael Murphy and, in his film debut, professional football player Fred Williamson. The film inspired the popular and critically acclaimed television series M*A*S*H, which ran from 1972 to 1983.


MASH won the Palme d'Or at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival.[13] It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Sally Kellerman), and Best Film Editing, and won an Oscar for its screenplay.
The film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) in 1971.
The film was the 38th film to be released to the home video market when 20th Century Fox licensed fifty motion pictures from their library to Magnetic Video.
In 1996, MASH was deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
The film is #17 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies" and #54 on "AFI" list of the top 100 American movies of all time.
The film was re-released in North America in 1973 and earned an estimated $3.5 million in rentals. In order to attract audiences to the M*A*S*H television series which was struggling with audiences at the time the film was re-released at 112 minutes and received a PG rating. Several scenes were edited including segments of graphic operations, the f-word in the football game, and the scene where the curtain in the shower is pulled up on Hot Lips. "Suicide is Painless", the film's main theme song was removed from this version and new title music by Ahmad Jamal, was used instead according to film critic and historian Leonard Maltin in his movie and video guide. In the 1990s Fox Video released a VHS version of MASH under their "Selections" banner which ran 116 minutes and rated PG. However this is not the alternate PG version which was released in 1973. It runs the same amount of time that the original 1970 version did and none of the aforementioned scenes were removed from this VHS release and "Suicide is Painless" was still the main theme used. The actual 1973 PG edited version, has never been released on any video formats in the United States.[14]
The critical reception for MASH was unanimously positive. The film currently holds a 90% rating on review aggragator Rotten Tomatoes based on 39 reviews.