Catch-22 (film)
Catch-22 is a 1970 American satirical comedy war film adapted from the 1961 novel of the same name by Joseph Heller. In creating a black comedy revolving around the "lunatic characters" of Heller's satirical anti-war novel set at a fictional Mediterranean base during World War II, director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry (also in the cast) worked on the film script for two years, converting Heller's complex novel to the medium of film.
Catch-22
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The cast included Alan Arkin, Bob Balaban, Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin, Italian actress Olimpia Carlisi, French comedian Marcel Dalio, Art Garfunkel in his acting debut, Jack Gilford, Charles Grodin, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Austin Pendleton, Paula Prentiss, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, and Orson Welles. Garfunkel's songwriting partner Paul Simon also appeared but his scenes were cut.
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In popular culture[edit]
The anti-war song "Survivor Guilt" by punk rock band Rise Against features samples of dialog from the movie, specifically the discussion between Nately and the old man about the fall of great countries and potential fall of the US, and their argument about the phrase "It's better to live on your feet than die on your knees." The same excerpts from the film previously were used by lead singer Tim McIlrath, in the song "Burden", recorded by his former band, Baxter.[31]
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
Orson Welles first tried to buy the rights to Heller's novel to independently produce and direct it in 1962, but was unsuccessful. He wound up cast in the role of General Dreedle.
Columbia Pictures purchased the rights to it in 1965 and attempted to develop the film with Richard Brooks or Richard Quine as potential directors, while Jack Lemmon was considered as Captain Yossarian. Heller grew dissatisfied with the two as he believed they were “incapable of pursuing the wildly satirical (and anti-military) point of view of his novel.” The studio subsequently sold the rights to Martin Ransohoff at Filmways in 1967, which had already hired Mike Nichols to direct. Nichols originally announced that principal photography would begin in “late 1967-early 1968” in Yugoslavia and Italy. However, the project was delayed for several years as Nichols and John Calley searched for Italian terrain that had not been destroyed by World War II.
Daily Variety in the period 1967-69 reported that Andre Previn would score the picture and that Nichols sought to cast Walter Matthau and Al Pacino in the movie, but none of them participated in the picture. Stacy Keach was also cast in the film before departing a month prior to filming.[2]
Filming[edit]
Nichols eventually decided on Mexico as the primary shooting location of the film. Production began on January 13, 1969, at an airfield constructed for the film on the Pacific Coast of Mexico near Guaymas, Sonora. The filmmakers spent $180,000 building a five-mile runway specifically for the film and an additional $250,000 for a 6,000-ft. runway. After a week of filming, Nichols sent back 200 of the American extras in order to give the base in the film a more isolated atmosphere. Welles filmed his cameo appearance as General Dreedle in eight days. Some filming also took place at the Palazzo Farnese and the Palazzo Navona in Rome. Production concluded in August 1969 after a final two months of interior filming in Hollywood.[2]
Adaptation[edit]
The adaptation changed the book's plot. Several story arcs are left out, and many characters in the movie speak dialogue and experience events of other characters in the book.[3] Despite the changes in the screenplay, Heller approved of the film, according to a commentary by Nichols and Steven Soderbergh included on a DVD release.[4] According to Nichols, Heller was particularly impressed with a few scenes and bits of dialogue Henry created for the film, and said he wished he could have included them in the novel.[5]
The pacing of the novel Catch-22 is frenetic, its tenor intellectual, and its tone largely absurdist,[6] interspersed with brief moments of gritty, almost horrific, realism. The novel did not follow a normal chronological progression; rather, it was told as a series of different and often (seemingly, until later) unrelated events, most from the point of view of the central character Yossarian. The film simplified the plot.[7][8]
Reception[edit]
Critical reaction[edit]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 81% of 31 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's consensus reads: "Catch-22 takes entertainingly chaotic aim at the insanity of armed combat, supported by a terrific cast and smart, funny work from Buck Henry and Mike Nichols."[19] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 70 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[20]
Vincent Canby of The New York Times praised the film as "the most moving, the most intelligent, the most humane--oh, to hell with it!--it's the best American film I've seen this year." He felt the film was "complete and consistent", and commended its balance of comedy and seriousness as well as the ensemble cast.[7] In a cover story about Mike Nichols, Time wrote "It is the book's cold rage that he has nurtured. In the jokes that matter, the film is as hard as a diamond, cold to the touch and brilliant to the eye. To Nichols, Catch-22 is 'about dying'; to Arkin, it is 'about selfishness'; to audiences, it will be a memorable horror comedy of war, with the accent on horror."[21] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 stars out of 4, calling it "a disappointment, and not simply because it fails to do justice to the Heller novel." He noted that the film "recites speeches and passages from the novel, but doesn't explain them or make them part of its style. No, Nichols avoids those hard things altogether, and tries to distract us with razzle-dazzle while he sneaks in a couple of easy messages instead."[22] Similarly, Gene Siskel for the Chicago Tribune gave the film 2+1⁄2 stars out of four arguing the film "spends too much time accommodating a huge cast", and instead the film should have properly focused on "Yossarian's combat, with the catch into his head where it belongs". Nevertheless, he wrote "The film's technical credits, photography, and special effects are uniformly outstanding. Of the huge supporting cast, Dick Benjamin, Bob Newhart, and Jack Gilford are the best."[23] Charles Champlin, reviewing for the Los Angeles Times, felt that Catch-22 is awfully good, and also a disappointment: Chilly brilliant at its best but flawed at last by its detachment and by its failure to catch fire and give off heat. Its fury is cold and intellectual and cannot reach us or involve us at gut level."[24]
Richard Schickel in LIFE panned the film, saying it failed to translate what made Joseph Heller's novel a generational phenomenon to the screen. In his review entitled "One of our novels is missing," Schickel wrote:
Adaptations in other media[edit]
A pilot episode for a Catch-22 television series was aired on ABC in 1973, with Richard Dreyfuss in the Captain Yossarian role.[29]
A six-part Catch 22 miniseries, produced by Hulu and Sky Italia, premiered worldwide in 2019.
There have been other films with "Catch-22" in their names, including the documentary Catch-22 (2007) and the short films Catch 22: The New Contract (2009) and Catch22 (2010), but they have been unrelated to either the book or film adaptation.[30]
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