This movie begins with one of the most artistic openings ever put to film. We are greeted with a black screen and dead silence, which gradually lightens as credits appear. About the same time as we notice the faint outline of a mountain range, we hear the faint call of a distant sea bird. What we are seeing is a sunrise on the island of Pianosa, west of Italy, although the location is not mentioned in the film. As the world wakes up, we hear more birds, and the sun pulls itself over the ragged horizon as the camera looks across the Mediterranean Sea. Suddenly, fully three minutes into the film, the silence is broken by the roar of heavy aircraft engines starting up, belching smoke and staggering to life. The camera pulls back and we discover that we are on an Army Air Force base, and we are at war.
We are then treated with some incredible long-lens cinematography as we watch the squadron’s B-25 bombers, overladen with bomb loads and barely able to fly, claw themselves into the sky by their pilots’ sheer force of will. The camera pans across the planes waiting to take off, and we see the canopy art that reinforces the fact that we are in World War II and that these airmen have apparently survived a huge number of missions.
We pan to a ruined building with a man standing in the bombed-out frame of a window, and we watch as the camera zooms up and moves aside to reveal two others standing behind him. All are engaged in a conversation that we cannot quite hear over the roar of the planes, but which is rapidly concluded. The first man, whose name we do not yet know is the main character Yossarian, walks out of the building past an anonymous person engaged in raking dirt around, throws his flight wing insignia on the ground and starts off across the airfield. The person he passed pulls out a large kitchen knife, stabs him in the kidneys, and runs off. The scene ends with Yossarian lying on his back in the dirt, bleeding profusely as the shadows of bomber wings pass over him. As he loses consciousness, the screen fades to white and we are dumped straight into the insane maelstrom that is Catch-22.
The book is exceedingly complex, with ten major characters, 46 minor, but omnipresent, characters, and a rough dozen of characters with well-defined supporting parts to play but who are never actually named. The movie script does an excellent job of selecting a subset of these and cobbling together a summary that captures the essence of the story, and its Kafka-esque hopelessness. These are actors you have heard of all your life: Alan Arkin, Orson Welles, Anthony Perkins, Jon Voight, Martin Sheen, and even Bob Newhart and Art Garfunkel.
The main allegory upon which all situations and interactions here are based is stated well in Wikipedia:
Catch-22 is a military rule typifying bureaucratic operation and reasoning. The rule is not stated in a general form, but the principal example in the book fits the definition above: If one is crazy, one does not have to fly missions; and one must be crazy to fly. But one has to apply to be excused, and applying demonstrates that one is not crazy. As a result, one must continue flying, either not applying to be excused, or applying and being refused.
The novel by Joseph Heller is the origin of this phrase, arguably as famous as “Murphy’s Law”. The author made every scene, every situation, and every conversation hew to this rule. The script tells the story much the way the book does, in flashbacks to different events, seemingly unconnected except for the war and the constant bombing missions, tied together with astonishingly powerful cinematography and a very emotional soundtrack.
The film was released in June of 1970. It is difficult not to believe that it was produced in competition with the other biting satire of war that was released in March of that year, one you may have heard of: M*A*S*H. But that movie, which became the hit TV series starring the ultimate beta male Alan Alda, was a dark comedy interspersed with wartime drama, whereas Catch-22 is a dark psychological thriller interspersed with moments of comedy and horror. It is Alan Arkin’s best work.
If I have any criticism of this film, it is that it can be somewhat difficult to remember who is who. For instance, Nately, played by Art Garfunkel, is “the innocent and naive youngster” (as he always is 
in Nichols’ movies), but we never know that the person who stabbed Yossarian in the beginning is in fact Nately’s “girlfriend”, who blames Yossarian for Nately’s death. We never quite understand why McWatt, who is Yossarian’s pilot, likes to fly low and eventually runs into a mountain to end his pain. But the novel is long and complex, and there is only so much time to tell the story in the theater and I can cut the director some slack in this. We are presented with a canvas that has been cut to pieces and reassembled in random order, yet comes back to the story arc in rhythms that synchronize with our evolving emotional state. In the end, we slowly come to the conclusion that Yossarian, the fellow who is trying to convince the Army that he is insane so that he may survive to come home, is actually the only sane person in the entire story.
Mike Nichols, a director who has brought us an entire library of incredible films including Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Graduate, Biloxi Blues, Postcards From the Edge, and Charlie Wilson’s War, does a most commendable job with Catch-22. If you can score a DVD, or if you subscribe to Amazon Prime, I highly recommend you take a look. We do not make films like this anymore. This level of artistic talent has long since passed from Hollywood’s ken.
Catch-22 (1970) is directed by Mike Nichols and stars Alan Arkin, Martin Balsom, Richard Benjamin, Art Garfunkel, Buck Henry, Jack Gilford, Anthony Perkins, Paula Prentiss, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, Orson Welles, Bob Balaban, Susanne Benton, and Norman Fell.
George Clooney has just produced and of course starred in a serial version of Catch-22, available on Hulu. I have not seen this yet, but I will go into it knowing that Mr. Clooney will likely not achieve the perfection of the 1970 film.
2 replies on “Old Movie Review: “Catch-22””
I saw the 1st episode of the one on Hulu and it seemed good but had a few distractions and I was not paying close enough attention. I quickly lost track of characters. I will need to try again.
From what I could tell by the reviews, Clooney chose to use too many characters. Keeping the number down to a manageable level was one of the strengths of the movie. It’s very easy when confronted with the richness of this novel to ramble around and keep the confusion level high.
For instance, Major deCoverley (Hugh Laurie) doesn’t appear in the movie, even though he is one of Yossarian’s prime nemeses.