M*A*S*H

Director: Robert Altman

1970 / 116min / DCP

A watershed film for both Altman and Sutherland, this Korean War-set black comedy hit pairs Sutherland with another quintessential New Hollywood star, Elliott Gould. The duo respectively play frontline battlefield surgeons Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre of the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, rabble-rousing practical jokers who cope with the bloody insanity all around them with an absurd sense of humor, facing down the shadow of death with dry martinis and desperate laughter. Altman’s film would later be adapted into a long-running CBS sitcom, but the small-screen version could never touch the grim gallows humor of the original.