I recently saw the the 1970 film
'M*A*S*H' and I am still amazed
it how sweetly the anti-authoritarian
message it had to convey was delivered.
The script could have been a Marx brothers
take on life in the military, without the frantic
mugging and and playing to the camera
that Groucho had to resort to, to get past
the restrictions of the Hays Code.
There was no Hays Code when 'M*A*S*H was made.
Already weakly applied, with many exceptions made
the code was abolished in 1965.
Robert Altman was free to make his first film,
a back comedy set in a military surgical hospital,
and film most of it on location.
The scenes where the surgeons crack jokes,
at each other's expense, whilst the camera
drew the audience towards their patient's viscera
were the darkest comedy from America, yet,
The open display of humorous insubordination,
was all the funnier when it was done
without even the slightest hint of swearing.
If the last forty minutes were the silliest,
the rest was just magnificent, and made
pondering life and death in the military
more fun that anyone could believe
without them seeing it on the screen.
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