Buried Treasures: Catch-22

My series on early Mike Nichols films continues this month with his follow-up to the 1967 classic, “The Graduate.” In 1970, while most of the country oohed and aahed over Robert Altman’s anti-war black comedy, “M*A*S*H*,” I believe Nichols made a far greater statement with his brilliant adaptation of Joseph Heller’s caustic novel, “Catch-22.”

Due to its length and stream-of-consciousness structure, many considered “Catch-22,” unfilmable — both before and after the film’s release. Yet I was mesmerized by its unflinching portrait of a group of young men caught in a desperate situation from which there was no escape — again, a metaphor for the times. Much as Altman used the Korean War to represent Vietnam in “M*A*S*H,” Heller (and, by extension, Nichols) used World War II.

“Catch-22” follows a group of fighter pilots in the Italian theater of war whose commanding officer, Colonel Cathcart (a brilliant Martin Balsam), continually raises the number of missions required to return home. As the goal is always just out of reach, the men go crazy with anxiety and fear. Each pilot copes with the futile situation differently. Major Danby (Richard Benjamin) gives dopey, uninspiring pep talks before each mission; Lieutenant Nately (Art Garfunkel, in his first role) “falls in love” with a hooker; Captain Aardvark (a very young Charles Grodin) rapes a hooker; Captain Orr (a very young Bob Balaban) keeps crash-landing his plane; Captain Dobbs (a very young Martin Sheen) becomes emotionally unstable; and Hungry Joe (Peter Bonerz from “The Bob Newhart Show”) commits suicide.

The character holding all this together, if you will, is Captain Yossarian (Alan Arkin), who knows he’s going crazy but may, in fact, be the most sane of the lot. You see, early on in “Catch-22,” Yossarian visits Doc Daneeka (Jack Gilford), who explains the catch (which the Army has numbered 22). If a soldier or enlisted man is deemed “crazy,” he must be relieved of his duty and sent home. But if a soldier or enlisted man wants to go home, he must actually be sane, and therefore must stay and fight.

The convoluted logic of the catch for which the novel and film are named permeates the entire story. And these little nuggets of truth come so quickly, you’ll want to go back and watch certain scenes again. There’s a lot of action and a lot of philosophy contained within the film’s two-hour running time. Vastly underrated at the time, “Catch-22” demands at least a second, and more likely a third, viewing. It’s filled with witty dialogue of double-speak, in extreme close-up with no establishing shots.

As with most long novels adapted for the big screen, “Catch-22” is episodic in nature, but the difference here is that the various story threads do not appear in chronological order. The scenes in “Catch-22” are connected via thought process. In other words, a particular situation might remind one character of something that happened in the past, or might foreshadow an event that happens in the future. The screenplay immediately jumps to that loosely connected scene. So Quentin Tarantino fans rejoice — 24 years before “Pulp Fiction,” Nichols was jumping backward and forward in time in a picture every bit as entertaining and heady.

The large and high-powered cast is outstanding — from Balsam’s boisterous yet clueless Catchart to Anthony Perkins’ caring yet bumbling Chaplain Tappman. All of Hollywood wanted to work with Nichols after “The Graduate,” and he assembled an all-star group of players for this picture. Ironically, that same year Balsam appeared in “Patton” — the Oscar-winning, but certainly more mainstream, war film that took home the 1970 Best Picture Oscar.

In “Catch-22,” Arkin gives the best performance of his life as the confused Yossarian — a man who copes with the insanity through stunts like showing up to receive a medal stark naked, and paddling a raft all the way to Sweden. Comedian Bob Newhart was never better on the big screen, as the nervous and over-promoted Major Major. And Jon Voight plays against type as the meticulous Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder — whose calm button-down personality masks the fact that he is perhaps the most dangerous of Heller’s characters. Minderbinder formulates a wild blueprint for earning money on the black market. When the market crashes, those officers who have bought in to his program are left penniless.

The great Orson Welles, of all people, gives the funniest performance of his career as a visiting general sent to “fire up the troops” in a scene that ranks with the “War Room” scene in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” as the darkest laugh-out-loud bit of satire ever filmed. I can’t tell you more without spoiling it, but suffice to say the scene is still side-splitting almost a half-century after the film was released.

The final act of “Catch-22” is more somber, and the horror of war is laid bare before our very eyes. Veteran French actor Marcel Dalio plays an Italian whorehouse patron who explains to Lieutenant Nately that Italy has persevered for centuries through cowardice, and by outwardly supporting whichever regime had invaded it at the time. This is not your grandfather’s war movie — and these are not heroic characters, to say the least.

It is impossible to watch “Catch-22” without having deep emotions stir inside. The World War II generation hated this film because it presented war as futile and its participants as fearful and cowardly. Some considered its ideas to be Communist. Baby boomers loved it for this exact reason. As their brothers and friends were dying in Vietnam, Nichols showed us a war that was repulsive and downright repugnant. A film like this might never get made today.

But do yourself a favor. If you’ve never read the novel or seen the film, see it before reading it. That’s always my recommendation because, save for “The Godfather,” motion pictures rarely improve upon an author’s original words. And with “Catch-22,” the film is more narratively accessible than the novel. The novel contains even more characters, and its chronological jumps are a little harder to follow than in the film (and different from those in the film). Nichols kept the spirit of the novel without fruitlessly trying to exactly copy it. Buck Henry’s screenplay adds a few lines of dialogue, and applies certain traits of characters who aren't in the film to those who are.

Perhaps this is one reason “Catch-22” was not well-received in 1970. Those who had read the novel (which included a great deal of young people) were disappointed in the film. I personally believe Nichols and Henry had no choice but to make certain adaptations in order to bring “Catch-22” to the big screen at all. I had no problem with these alterations, but then again, I saw the film first.

“Catch-22” is my favorite dark comedy of all time, and tops my list of Best Pictures of 1970. While Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” is the gold standard against which all anti-war black comedies are measured, I believe “Catch-22” covers more ground, makes its points more subtly, and is less silly than “Strangelove.” (And I don’t mean less funny; I mean less silly.) “M*A*S*H” is certainly a good picture, too, but Altman intentionally uses a downright sloppy style of filmmaking to accentuate his characters’ disinterest in war whereas Nichols’ camerawork is always crisp and clear, and his characters more well-defined. I believe Altman bested “M*A*S*H” five years later with his crowning achievement, “Nashville.”

Ironically, Nichols bested “Catch-22” the very next year, and that film, “Carnal Knowledge” will be next month’s Buried Treasure.

Andy Ray's reviews of current films appear at http://www.artschannelindy.com/