M*A*S*H

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival, M*A*S*H put Robert Altman’s name—and some of the rudiments of his offbeat methods—on the map. The episodic narrative follows the antics of a trio of surgeons—Hawkeye, Duke, and Trapper John—in the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea. Zooming wide shots, overlapping dialogue, and gallows (or operating table) humor are combined with blood-and-guts visuals, and the ever-present squawk box on the soundtrack, to assault rather than soothe the senses of a nation shattered by the Vietnam War and tattered by the media.