M*A*S*H was an amazing film, especially for 1970, which was still a pretty buttoned down time for film in Hollywood than many of us may remember. I saw it for the first time well after the TV shows were a fixture in weekly TV fare, probably in the 80s.
At that moment I still had not connected with the fact that the theme music introducing the movie had included sung lyrics. That singing, with its seemingly placid undertone and complete lack of anxiety --juxtaposed with visuals of that surge of incoming helos full of wounded soldiers-- was absolutely stunning. Much, much more so than the instrumental version used in the TV series. But, it's no surprise at all that those lyrics met the editor's buzzsaw before that theme music ever hit the little screens of our living rooms during the Vietnam war.
