There's been some discussion of
MASH on the boards in recent weeks and I know it has been divisive here at MoFo, so without rehashing all of that, suffice to say that I think it is great, entirely rewatchable and funny, and it is the fourth title from my own list to make the top hundred. I had it as my number nineteen pick, joining
Breaking Away (#13),
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (#17), and
The Man Who Would Be King (#10).
And if you're wondering how a degenerated movie like Altman's could have reached a position of responsibility in the Movie Forums Top 100 of the 1970s, it was drafted. By twelve of us.
MASH was on twelve ballots, with two top ten votes (a third and a fifth placer). Martin Scorsese's
Mean Streets was also on a dozen ballots with two top ten votes (eighth and ninth place), but eeked out one more overall point.
Both
MASH and
Mean Streets are examples of two filmmakers finally able to fully spread their artistic wings, and both of those films are chock full of the techniques, themes, and actors that would populate their work for the rest of the decade, if not their entire careers. Altman's sound design, overlapping dialogue, use of the anamorphic widescreen frame, the large ensemble, and improvisational style of
MASH are all revolutionary, whether you dig the resulting film or not.
Mean Streets has so much of the innovative camera movement and editing, use of pop and rock on the soundtrack often in ironic juxtaposition to the tension and violence on screen, and acting and characters that are a melding of the Italian Neo-Realist and Actors Studio sensibilities into something all his own that were such a hallmark of Marty's cinema.
Of course, your mileage may vary.
Anyway, that's it for the double digit point earners. It's a hundred and up from here, Fellows! That's the high country.
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