I had to go look up how they shot this, wondering if they'd used the same tricks Memphis Belle had used to turn 3 B-17s into a squadron of B-17s. Nope! They actually scraped 17 flyable b-25s together. Amazing. Shooting in Mexico probably made it easier to avoid meeting FAA airworthiness requirements on a $17m budget. Even account for inflation, shooting 1500 hours of aerial footage of 17 vintage warbirds on $17m is astounding. Plus being shot in the 70s barely 25 years after the end of WW2 probably made it easier to find people who could perform maintenance on these aircraft and keep them running for the shoot a lot cheaper than it would be today, not to mention finding spares etc.
My father, who was a Navy Combat Cameraman attached temporarily to the Army, wandered into an Army field hospital on Okinawa during July of 1945 after being wounded by a piece of shrapnel. After he was treated one of the doctors asked him how long he had been overseas and he answered, "Two and a half years". Then the doctor asked him the proverbial $64,000 question: "Do you want to go home?" If he had answered "yes", that would have been a rational answer and he would have been sent back into the line. If he had answered, "no, I want to stay and finish the war", that would have been a rational answer and he would have been sent back into the line. However, what he actually answered was, "I don't care one way or the other". So, the doctors decided that he had been out there too long and was suffering from "Combat Fatigue", and they shipped him back to the States. That is a true story. It's too bad Joseph Heller never thought of it. Incidentally, my father read "Catch 22" when it was first published and he loved it.
Very good post! I'm happy for your dad AND for your family. I'll remember the anecdote if I'm ever in a similar situation (hopefully it will never come to that). 👍🏼👍🏼
Okay so I joined the Army. ARMY. I fully expected to sent to a combat zone. TWO DEPLOYMENTS. SENT TO GERMANY. GERMANY. And this was not during World War II. Prior to joining I had met a couple of soldiers who had been in a long time. They had never been to a combat zone. In the Army that was rare. So I was looking at Soldier magazine I think. Saw a picture of an NCO or Officer walking off a transport aircraft. In one hand he had his brief case. In the other, his M16 and a typewriter. I thought to myself, "Aw gezzzzz Is this in the Army? Naw...I could never see myself like that." Well a few years later on my second deployment. I find myself walking off a C-5. It is like 2200 hours. In Europe. I am the NCOIC of a unit. In one hand I have my briefcase. In the other, my M16 and a typewriter. I had a flashback to that day reading Soldier magazine. And I'm like, "Oh my GAWD! I BECAME THAT GUY!...." I kept it to myself.....
The book is great. The movie is a great adaptation, and a great movie. When you realize that Mike Nichols' first 3 movies are "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf," "The Graduate," and "Catch 22," you have to be amazed! Three masterpieces in a row!
Read somewhere that they had nearly all of the airworthy B25s in existence at the time gathered for this film. Fantastic that they cared enough to spend that kind of money and used them so naturally in the film. Gives you the feel of really being on a Mediterranean Theater airbase instead of a movie set. The planes are really like another character.
Milo's entrepreneurial streak reminded me of a story I was told by a former captain of a Vietnam Helicopter unit. He took three dollars from each man in the unit, took a Helicopter to an Australian unit and bought a pallet of Beer (at the time Australian Beer was $0.20 each so it rings true). He then swapped some of the Beer for steak an then Lobster. That night each man had a Steak, Lobster on top of normal rations along with two cans of Australian Beer. His CO ordered him not to explain how he got it! So while the US dollar may rule, there are times you are better off with Australian Beer, the best in Vietnam!
The shots of those 25’s taking off, is the closest 99%(and eventually 100) of us will ever have gotten to actually seeing what a WW2 Bombing mission actually would have looked like leaving the ground. Incredible movie.
An absolutely incredible book made into an absolutely incredible movie. Whoever did the casting should be memorialized in bronze. As a vet myself it's nice to see, in these militaristic times, a side to the military that few even know exists. All these guys are very real. That what makes it so great. Remember that when it was made a large number of the people seeing it were WWII vets themselves and could truly appreciate it. On another note, if you've ever had a WWII bomber, B24 or B17 overhead you can imagine what 1,000 of them overhead must have sounded like to the Germans.
Underrated, unfairly dismissed by dull critics. Enjoy it for the outstanding cast, the comic performances (like Dick Benjamin here), the cinematography. Nothing could match the scope of the novel, a genuine masterpiece, the darkest of satire (Milo is Corporate America).
As someone with a deep love and understanding of aviation, and a longtime old movie aficionado, a couple of things come to mind. I'm glad to see so many B-25s flying. To those who see this takeoff sequence, imagine this. If ANY of those planes had had an engine failure or any kind of rejected takeoff situation, the calamity that would have followed would have been tremendous. The lives potentially lost along with the total loss of irreplaceable aircraft is barely imaginable, which leads me to the second point. My hats off to the pilots for this carefully planned and choreographed sequence. It's a visual tribute to their skill and dedication, as well as those of their support crews, (maintainers, logisticians and the like).
@@carlweiser5697 That was a typo on my part. I know they're B25 Mitchells, not B24 Liberators. As I said above, I did not thoroughly proofread before posting.
Tragically, during filming, the British AD (Assistant Director) John Jordan who had worked on such films as 007's 'You Only Live Twice', 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', 'Battle of Britain' and many other films where he shot many of the aerial sequences. He was known to take chances and had previously been injured filming 'You Only Live Twice' in the helicopter sequence. He was hanging outside the aircraft to get shots and another helicopter was buffeted by wind and got too close, the rotor blade slicing his leg. It had to be amputated. In Catch 22, he refused to wear a safety harness. When one of the other bombers buffeted the aircraft he was in, he was sucked him out of the open canopy and plunged 4000 feet to his death.
When I was at my brothers house in Australia one Saturday night because he’d made a load of home made booze. We decided to read out aloud different passages from Catch 22 , while drinking the (strong beer ) , we’ve never laughed so much ,and got pissed so much since that night ! That was 1973 , sadly my brother passed away in 2019 , but it is a cool memory amongst others that i shared with him , RIP. Stan I love you xx
1 of my favorite scenes. You could not get this movie on ANY military base because it was so true. I got a copy & had it played on ship's T.V. It became 1 of the most requested shows on the ship. EVERY military man can relate to this movie because something in the movie happened to them, or they know of something that happened to someone they know in the movie.
@@sullivanspapa1505 Pretty much the way its always been, both sides of the aisle, try not to be butthurt, and don't forget that Lesco Brandon character.
@@sullivanspapa1505 lol typical stupid liberal. Trump hates war, he never started any new war during his year. Your black jesus, odumbo, otoh, started 3 new wars. Anyone from his family went to war? anyone from the clinton?
One of the best (if not best) books I have ever read....and one of the best (if not best) movies I have ever seen....I saw the movie first when I was about 13 years old and it changed my whole outlook on life....I read the book in my early 20's and got totally absorbed in it, as obviously it goes into a lot more details of each character....both are highly recommended.......
Agree... I just looked at IMDB rating of the film, and it said 7/10... I don´t understand.. To me, it is one of the best films ever, and I´ve seen a lot. How come the rating is so low? Too difficult? To slow? It is sad..
I finally got around to reading "22" a couple years ago, I thought it was going to be a depressing, sad story, which it kind of is in it's own way but by the time I finished, I had laughed all the way through it. I highly suggest reading the book before watching the movie. The movie is a work of art and well acted, not a bad scene in the whole movie.
I had a neighbor once that fought in Korea (Chosin Reservoir). He was once assigned to "burial detail" using a bulldozer to dig mass graves and bury NK and Chinese casualties. He got out of it by telling them "I need to get out of here. I'm starting to LIKE THIS too much (evil grin)"
That's the madness of war. They want you to commit atrocities to fellow human beings, but if you show other signs of psychopathy you're not fit for service. The catch 22 is inherent.
We forget, having seen this movie (in a theatre...imagine that???!!!) 50 years ago, how much these passages affected our life outlook, and how different life is now...how there is less freedom to take a absurdist view of life...how much less of a gap there is between authority and the ability to separate it. Over the last 20 years, and especially the last five, madness, irrationality and opportunism have overrun our world. Be sure to watch the segment posted where the Italian man explains to Art Garfunkel the lessons of survivial. "I'm 107 years old...how old are you?" "I'll be 20 next week." "You see???"
There's a story about Heller at a publisher's party in New York He was being grilled by some wall street tycoon who asked him how long it took him to write Catch-22 and how much he made from the book/movie When he got the answer, the tycoon scoffed that he made that much in a week And Heller responded that he had something the tycoon would never have.... "Enough" That wisdom is why Catch-22 is a masterpiece
Bob Balaban, who plays Orr, is one of my favorite soft spoken actors ever since seeing him in this film. Later, when he co-starred in Close Encounters and had some great lines in that, he became much more famous. For those who remember, he worked with Voight before in 'Midnight Cowboy', though not a very appealing role. ;)
6:55 OMG, I forgot about this moment as the B25 crash lands and they're totally oblivious. Brilliant stunt pilot with the one wheel touchdown before taking off again off-camera.
The book is a masterpiece. The movie did the best it could, it would have needed to be hours long to do the book justice. The casting of the movie was spot on increadible.
I just flew in to Sing. from Norf. No rest. They started Battle E drills. The instructor wanted to everyone with thumbs up. 35 people in the line, I was in the middle & I gave him the finger. He never caught it. 🤣
That wasn't Yossarian. Alan Arkin plays the role of Yossarian who is a bombardier. The pilot is Captain Orr played by Bob Balaban. Orr is the character who keeps ditching his plane so he could paddle to Norway.
This movie was released in 1971. That was the year the Universal Draft started and college boys were up for grabs. It apparently was not a money maker but no one knows how deep an impact it had on the perception of the war. Amazing that a bombadier in WW II figured this all out and wrote the book. I guess you could say it was about corporate warfare. The character played by Jon Voigt represented the head of General Motors symbolically.
Dear Mr Clueless: The Draft LOTTERY ended in1971. Before that, every 18 year old MALE had a draft number, based on his birthday, during the year. There was a lottery drawing, and the numbers were drawn in random order. The first 70 to 100 numbers would get a draft announcement, if they didn't have a deferment, for some reason. Oh, and by the way, the military does not like draftees, and doesn't want them. The modern military needs more intelligence than most Democrat/Marxists have. MacNamara's Morons proved that. (Another Democrat idea that failed.)
@@Jonascord 1973 "Draft", for those born in 1953, 646 men drafted.. My number was 96, I didn't receive an induction notice. 1972 "Draft", 49,514. Men drafted.
Consider that the film was released only some 25 years after the depicted events, and now it is 52 years since the film's release. I saw it in 1970, it totally blew me away, then read the book.
Really, ? That’s nuts…but I guess that’s the difference between huge jet engines ,and Rotary engines maybe…also a jet plane is like riding a crotch rocket like my 200mph Hayabusa I used to have, and say a 50mph 1940’s bike, lol…speaking of top gun, I think it’s simply sad how they keep pushing the movies release date back due to covid and the money, thinking that some how those of us are going to endanger our health by going to the theater to see it instead of at home…if they had just let it be showed in 2020 many of us might of rented it by now many times, but their greed has turned me off, plus since I’ve got a 130 inch screen at home, I can still have all the same effects of the film while remaining healthy..l
When I was around 10 years old my father owned an airplane and we all flew from CA to Mexico to visit my grandparents who were traveling in their motor home in Mexico. We flew to Guymas and my father borrowed a car and we drove out to this deserted airfield in the middle of nowhere. I remember asking why we were there and he explained the movie and tried to describe what had been there. At that time around 1980 there were only a handful of huts and the landing strip so not much to see but pretty cool to say I've been there.
An amazing book, very good read. You'll get much more out of it reading it slowly or the second time around. Excellent and a must for anybody wanting to understand the craziness and stupidity of the US Armed Forces even today.
I love this way of sound recording, leaving all the noise authentical till the extend, that sometimes it is hopeless to catch a word - as well as hopeless to get Catch 22. The tape recorder itself is an actor.
look at whats going on in that scene . they could have been merely sitting in a room somewhere having that discussion but instead they are in a noisy dangerous environment with bombers taxiing all around them. amazing movie!
My favorite part in the book is when the colonel and the chaplain are talking about praying for a tighter bomb pattern and the chaplain tells the colonel his sister is an enlisted man. The writing perfectly describes some officer's disdain for enlisted but Heller makes it hilarious. Art. Great art.
I had the privilege of getting a flight on the B-25 Executive Sweet which was the B-25 Vestal Virgin in the movie Catch 22. That was an awesome experience.
Richard Benjamin rarely seems to get the accolades for his role in this movie. Love it in the debriefing scene when he is oblivious to General Dreedle's order to stop moaning.
I love the sound of my motorbike when I open the throttle (Triumph Thunderbird 1600 - decatted). IT must have been absolutely incredible to witness and hear an entire squadron on full throttle hurtling down the runway.
The TV show completely lacked imagination. Although it covered more of the book it missed the pathos and atmosphere of the story. The film took greater liberties and covered a fraction of the book but got the essence of the story
My dad was in Fiji and played in the band and the natives and service men had a large black market going from C rations for laundry and house keeping to a jeep for a local tribal leader for land usage. They'd send a plane loaded with beer and jello up in time for dinner and happy hour to chill at altitude he said they played concerts for the natives and the O club and helped unload and load ships going here and there. All in all not so bad.
Finding all those authentic B25 "Mitchell" bombers AND pilots was quite an accomplishment -- but then they had to find mechanics and other ground personnel to service/fix all those planes. Amazing!
Catch-22's budget could accommodate 17 flyable B-25s, and an additional non-flyable hulk was acquired in Mexico, made barely ferriable, and flown with its landing gear down to the Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, filming location, only to be burned and destroyed in the landing crash scene.
If I remember correctly, this type of “mass takeoff” was quite tricky and dangerous and was a very impressive stunt. Much better than MASH in my opinion.
The book is a masterpiece. The movie did not do the best representation of the book. Though, it would be extremely difficult to do a complete work of the book in any book.
Used to see many of these 25s at old Orange County Airport (now called John Wayne). They were at a makeshift air museum there at TallMantz Aviation. I scrounged around there many times as an airport rat.
Catch 22 is the book I had in my bag when I went to basic training in the Air Force. The Training Instructors were not happy to have an airman reading such anti-military trash...
A few short years after this movie was released, I stood in Guaymas, Mexico on the very beach where it was filmed. All the buildings had been leveled and the runway had about an inch of sand on it- it took me a while to find it. I was maybe 15 years old, on vacation with my parents. The beach was deserted and beautiful. nothing but sand, scrub brush and the sand covered runway on land. The beach itself was incredible, but the water teemed with bright blue jellyfish. I mistakenly took one of the many lying on the sand for a short piece of fishing line and picked it up. I quickly let it go. We stayed in a villa on top of a hill just a short distance away. There wasn't anything else around. Prices were cheap in Mexico back then, cheap enough that even a barely middle class family like mine could afford nice things. Google earth map shows a huge sprawling resort there now...
I lived in San Carlos for many years and have walked that former movie runway many many times. There is a nice hiking area in the hills, and the end of the runway is a nice trailhead. There is nearly nothing remaining of the old movie set today. When I lived there there were still a few small buildings.
A satirical take on war .. "Catch 22" is Southwark Council who have told me a) I am required to, b) I am not allowed to, repair my below-pavement coal cellar .. a beautiful shot of the aircraft taking off - some of the reasons I enjoy this clip.
I watching this because I'm forced to be at home as a result of COVID-19 and because of COVID-19 I need to file compensation. But in order to file for compensation I need to prove that I've been severally financially impacted and in order to prove that I need to contact the bank. But the bank doesn't have that service anymore because of COVID-19. Therefore, I know how he feels and need to watch this to get a laugh out of life.
6:55 The plane coming down the runaway behind Voight & Balsam and eventually "crashes" did not actually crash as shown. If you look at the burning wreckage you can see the trailing smoke from the flying aircraft going further down the runway beyond the "crash". In other words, the flying plane flew past a wreck already staged and burning. By the time the camera turned in that direction, the flying plane was well past the crash site and hidden behind it. I'm well aware that it has been documented that a particular B25 was crashed specifically for the scene. What I'm saying is that the flying-by plane and the crashed-burning plane are not the same. It HAD to be staged like that in order to get it on film. If it were left to chance, it's possible the B25 could have crashed too close or too far away, or possibly injured or killed one of the actors.
I had an idea that's how was done, but wasn't sure until now. It's still one helluva scene though. Would never be allowed today, insurance companies would never underwrite it.
Not to mention the pilot. It would have been absolutely out of the question to stage such a stunt. Apart from the extreme danger, and the equally extreme likelihood of miss-timing, if one of the actors messed up his lines they would have had to crash another one. The burning B-25 was a real aircraft though. A barely flyable hulk acquired in Mexico. It was positioned in the crashed pose and then set alight. As an aside, when you see Minderbinder and Colonel Cathcart's hats blow off when the plane explodes Milo's hat falls in to the back of the jeep and Cathcart's goes shooting off in the blue yonder but they both reach into where the hand brake is to get a new one.
My mom, the pacifist in the family, showed this movie to us "boys" when it was in the drive-in. Dad always crowed about being in the navy in Korea. Stationed in Japan, never saw a single day of conflict. My bros and I all joined separate forces. Each of us got to deal with conflict and death. We all remember this movie.
I've always felt that the structure of the book reflects the jazz music of the times. Yossarian is in the hospital at the beginning, the story moves out and returns to the hospital and moves out again and returns to the hospital at the end where Yossarian escapes. Maybe Heller was a fan of Miles Davis or someone like that? Maybe I'm crazy but Catch 22 is no help anymore.
It is structured that way because it is Yossarian's memory... we don't remember our lives in chronological order but in sequences related by sense and association. Also, Yossarian is traumatised by ... the incident ... in the plane during the Avignon mission and is unwilling to remember the details ... Snowdon's "secret". As the book progresses, more of the sequence of the Avignon mission is revealed. So this is an example of postmodernism where the author plays with the structure of the novel itself, knowing that the written word is not mirroring reality, but perception. There, there. There, there.
My all-time favorite book. I read it years before the movie. I suggested to my wife that the best actor to play Yossarian was Alan Arkin, which prophetically came true. There are so many things depicted in this book that touched on truth in real life. Joseph Heller had an uncanny way of presenting twisted logic. Sadly, he never wrote anything comparable to this masterpiece.
My Father sit in Genua Portofino Tophill in a Tent, Radio Recon on B 25 Bord to Bord Wave, he send the 8,8 Greetings.... My Father was Ju 52 Radio Operator but grounded by Malaria Terziana. His Unit was Lufttransport Kommando Neapel.
1:11 imagine a reset for another take here. You couldnt take the next B-25 in the queue (lurking in the background), because it would not be “Dumbo”. So i guess they would have to shut down and push Dumbo back to its starting point. Or paint “Dumbo” on the side of the lurking B-25 for the sake of simplifying a retake.
One of the very few movies that actually beat an already oustanding book. How Mike Nichols went from The Graduate to this production monster an aced it, is beyond me. What a piece of work.
The B 25 was actually a pretty good aircraft and I would suggest life expectancy in a B 17, B24, Lancaster or Halifax over Germany at this time would have been far far worse.
The Mitchell certainly was a stable and tough airframe. I'd have to look it up but anecdotally, I knew more living 25 aircrew than 26 aircrew. When I did a WWII interview project in the 80s, an interview witg a Marauder guy was considered a big win.
@@chpruc absolutely the B 26 when first deployed at low level had a horrid casualty rate hence the widow maker nickname albeit things got much better when used at higher altitudes, but interestingly the RAF never used them in Northern Europe unlike the B25 which I think was well liked amongst crews as reliable and strong.
Buck Henry did as good a job as could have been done to reduce the sprawling story of the book to a two-hour film, but there is just SO much of the meat of the story that had to be left out to make it fit the time allowance that theaters desired. For example, what happened to Doc after the plane incident is confusing and trivial in the film, but profound in the book. But the very best part of the film was not from the book, but from the brilliant mind of Buck Henry as he adapted the script: Milo: Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate. Yossarian: What difference does that make? He's dead. Milo: Then his family will get it. Yossarian: He didn't have time to have a family. Milo: Then his parents will get it. Yossarian: They don't need it, they're rich. (pause) Milo: Then they'll understand. Effing brilliant. But you really should read the book, too, to get the full effect of the entire story between book and film.
Right! So chilling and Voight delivers the line with cynicism and pathos. The irony is, he's defending his friend who was killed by Voight's operations, only to be stabbed by his friend's lover who blames him. Truly maddening and oh so realistic.
@@robbiereilly Over the years of reading and watching the story I have shifted what I thought various scenes "meant" and which was my favorite and why. The "Then they'll understand" scene is still my favorite, but I have come to see the final scene as something worth more study. I now see it as a man, pushed beyond his limits, gleefully rather than defiantly throwing himself forward into mortal danger if not death itself. He prefers a dangerous longshot chance at escaping the entire system supporting that lunacy, to a highly-ordered yet incompetently-designed system that serves the system itself, with humans being its minions. What do you think about the final scene?
The best part is when you realize being an army bomber crewman was one of the most dangerous jobs, specifically because of catastrophically bad planning, strategy, and terrible planes. The B-24 was a much better plane than the B-17, meant to replace it, but they just kept flying B-17s anyway.
When you realize being a bomber crewman basically meant being an accessory to war crimes. They gave up trying to precision bomb military targets and just started murdering civilians.
@@Heike-- they absolutely never did that, strategic bombing of the time always creates collateral damage when munitions factories and other military targets are built in city centers. Even the Kyoto firebombing came about because the Japanese utilized cottage industry for war munitions and equipment. The Germans and Japanese struck civilian targets as part of terror campaigns, but the Allies didn't have the bombers or airmen to waste on that sort of thing. Think about it for two seconds, killing civilians only increases the resolve and number of recruits on average and in no way reduces the enemies ability to fight. When it costs airmen and planes every single mission you can only afford to strike legitimate military targets. The Nazis lost specifically because they wasted munitions on civilians.
Oh come on man. Yes they deliberately bombed Axis civilians. It's not some kind of secret. Curtis LeMay said that he would have gone to the rope like Halder and Goering if the Allies were on the losing side. @@russetwolf13 "Think about it for two seconds"? WTF? The strategy was called "dehousing the population", forcing the Axis to divert resources into keeping their people alive. The Nazis lost because they did not have the logistical means (mainly oil) to sustain a war. You're uneducated and need to stop contributing to conversations like this if you're going to spread disinformation.
I’ve never been in the military, but I have worked for the government, and working for the government made me lose my regret for never being in the military.
Why have I never heard of this movie it looks great…I just found out about the remake as well..but I think the older war movies are much better just because they are using real planes and tanks, not fake computer junk..
The book was originally titled catch 18, but the publisher just released a book with 18 in the title. So what we call a catch 22, would have been a catch 18, as the term came from the book, not the other way around.
There is a Venn diagram of 3 intersecting sets: You must fly the required # of missions to complete your service, the psychologically unfit, and the scared, but sane group. Where these sets intersect is the catch-22: you have to keep flying, even if you are crazy, because the same group is sane. How do we find out the difference between the sane and insane? We'll the insane people have to self-report they are insane, which of course, is the thing a sane person would do. There is a certain beauty to the logic.
Remarkable book. Remarkable film too, although I cannot love it as I do the book. I read only recently that the film was the saviour of many of the B25s still flying today. Great film; great cast. But the nook was one of those not easily filmed. Good cast, too.
Dear fellow book lover Banjo. I think you want the word " book ", and not nook near the end of your post. But yes, sitting here late nodding to mentions of the brilliance of the novel, and how it helped shape my life.
I think I saw this in the theater but did not remember how stunning the cinematography acting camera work and staging and it also looks like how bloody dangerous it must’ve been to film this film
@@sizemorej Where did you hear that? Just off the top of my head I can think of (circa 1970) US, USSR, China, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Canada, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Argentina, Brazil, North Korea, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, South Africa, Mexico, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Libya, Yugoslavia, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Philippines, Japan, Switzerland, Austria, . . . etc. Maybe the 6th largest airforce in the US? (Air Force, Navy, Air National Guard, Coast Guard, Marine Corps . . . )
JB: Actually MOST of these planes are still in existence and flying. The infusion of cash and interest by this movie kick started the war bird restoration wave.
Some say Catch 22 is the best book about warfare ever written. I don't know, no one in my family has been involved in war. I think wars must be different. For the moment a Danish warship is fighting pirates off the coast of Nigeria. They do it to support the Danish merchant fleet. The circumstances are very different from WWII in Italy but the mission has its absurd elements anyway. I had forgotten how well this part of the movie pinpoints the whole story!
Director Mike Nichols wanted thirty-six B-25s to create the big U.S. Army Air Forces base, but the budget couldn't stretch to more than seventeen flyable Mitchells. An additional non-flyable hulk was acquired in Mexico, made barely ferry-able and flown with landing gear down to location, only to be burned and destroyed in the landing crash scene. The wreck was then buried in the ground next to the runway, where it remains to this day. - IMDB
I watched Catch 22 for the first time yesterday. Great group of actors. Dismal result. If you really want to enjoy Catch 22, read the book. It fleshes out all these characters and really drives home the story line Heller was trying to tell. The movie, compared to its contemporary movie Mash, is a dude.
Can we just talk a minute about the reality of putting all those actual planes in the air just for a movie? No CGI here.
I know. Thought the same thing.
I had to go look up how they shot this, wondering if they'd used the same tricks Memphis Belle had used to turn 3 B-17s into a squadron of B-17s. Nope! They actually scraped 17 flyable b-25s together. Amazing. Shooting in Mexico probably made it easier to avoid meeting FAA airworthiness requirements on a $17m budget. Even account for inflation, shooting 1500 hours of aerial footage of 17 vintage warbirds on $17m is astounding.
Plus being shot in the 70s barely 25 years after the end of WW2 probably made it easier to find people who could perform maintenance on these aircraft and keep them running for the shoot a lot cheaper than it would be today, not to mention finding spares etc.
Seriously. My very first thought.
and it was great how it held on the planes for soo long. most modern movies would have cut after 1.3 seconds
Da! I got this on disc and paper.
My father, who was a Navy Combat Cameraman attached temporarily to the Army, wandered into an Army field hospital on Okinawa during July of 1945 after being wounded by a piece of shrapnel. After he was treated one of the doctors asked him how long he had been overseas and he answered, "Two and a half years". Then the doctor asked him the proverbial $64,000 question: "Do you want to go home?" If he had answered "yes", that would have been a rational answer and he would have been sent back into the line. If he had answered, "no, I want to stay and finish the war", that would have been a rational answer and he would have been sent back into the line. However, what he actually answered was, "I don't care one way or the other". So, the doctors decided that he had been out there too long and was suffering from "Combat Fatigue", and they shipped him back to the States. That is a true story. It's too bad Joseph Heller never thought of it. Incidentally, my father read "Catch 22" when it was first published and he loved it.
Very good post! I'm happy for your dad AND for your family. I'll remember the anecdote if I'm ever in a similar situation (hopefully it will never come to that). 👍🏼👍🏼
Okay so I joined the Army. ARMY. I fully expected to sent to a combat zone.
TWO DEPLOYMENTS.
SENT TO GERMANY.
GERMANY.
And this was not during World War II.
Prior to joining I had met a couple of soldiers who had been in a long time.
They had never been to a combat zone.
In the Army that was rare.
So I was looking at Soldier magazine I think.
Saw a picture of an NCO or Officer walking off a transport aircraft.
In one hand he had his brief case.
In the other, his M16 and a typewriter.
I thought to myself, "Aw gezzzzz Is this in the Army? Naw...I could never see myself like that."
Well a few years later on my second deployment.
I find myself walking off a C-5.
It is like 2200 hours.
In Europe.
I am the NCOIC of a unit.
In one hand I have my briefcase.
In the other, my M16 and a typewriter.
I had a flashback to that day reading Soldier magazine.
And I'm like, "Oh my GAWD! I BECAME THAT GUY!...."
I kept it to myself.....
@@evinchester7820 Waddya want a laptop!? lol
Something to remember in the coming day's 🍻
A thoroughly wise man indeed your Dad Robert😎👍🏻
The book is great. The movie is a great adaptation, and a great movie. When you realize that Mike Nichols' first 3 movies are "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf," "The Graduate," and "Catch 22," you have to be amazed! Three masterpieces in a row!
Totally agree!
John Cazale was only in five films ever and all were nominated for the Academy Award for best picture.
That scene of the planes taking off is a work of art.
Probably the clearest, most extensive color footage of bombers taking off in existence - plane after plane after plane.
They’ll never be able to duplicate that shot with actual planes. Only CGI.
Read somewhere that they had nearly all of the airworthy B25s in existence at the time gathered for this film. Fantastic that they cared enough to spend that kind of money and used them so naturally in the film. Gives you the feel of really being on a Mediterranean Theater airbase instead of a movie set.
The planes are really like another character.
Agreed, powerful cinematography. I have not seen this flick in 30 years, I just may give another look tonight.
Wasn’t an accident….
Milo's entrepreneurial streak reminded me of a story I was told by a former captain of a Vietnam Helicopter unit. He took three dollars from each man in the unit, took a Helicopter to an Australian unit and bought a pallet of Beer (at the time Australian Beer was $0.20 each so it rings true). He then swapped some of the Beer for steak an then Lobster. That night each man had a Steak, Lobster on top of normal rations along with two cans of Australian Beer. His CO ordered him not to explain how he got it!
So while the US dollar may rule, there are times you are better off with Australian Beer, the best in Vietnam!
The movie MASH was great. But Catch 22 is such an odd, dark, prophetic gem; it infuriates me that it's never truly gotten its due.
It was soooooooooo much better than MASH, but so was the novel. MASH books were more like National Lampoon comics.
one of my all time fave films
Kellys Heros is great also. Zany
The book "Catch 22" was required reading in my English class. I believe far more know this book than you realize.
What do you mean “never truly gotten it’s due.” It was huge in my school. That, and Slaughterhouse Five.
The shots of those 25’s taking off, is the closest 99%(and eventually 100) of us will ever have gotten to actually seeing what a WW2 Bombing mission actually would have looked like leaving the ground. Incredible movie.
An absolutely incredible book made into an absolutely incredible movie. Whoever did the casting should be memorialized in bronze. As a vet myself it's nice to see, in these militaristic times, a side to the military that few even know exists. All these guys are very real. That what makes it so great. Remember that when it was made a large number of the people seeing it were WWII vets themselves and could truly appreciate it. On another note, if you've ever had a WWII bomber, B24 or B17 overhead you can imagine what 1,000 of them overhead must have sounded like to the Germans.
Where I live one of the locals has a P-51. Your heart skips beats, the ground shakes, you see God when it flies over.
The days when you could gather a dozen B-25s and casually launch them for a scene in a movie that wasn’t really about flying
Underrated, unfairly dismissed by dull critics. Enjoy it for the outstanding cast, the comic performances (like Dick Benjamin here), the cinematography.
Nothing could match the scope of the novel, a genuine masterpiece, the darkest of satire (Milo is Corporate America).
This is one of the finest and yet most underrated war movies ever, I love this movie.
As someone with a deep love and understanding of aviation, and a longtime old movie aficionado, a couple of things come to mind. I'm glad to see so many B-25s flying. To those who see this takeoff sequence, imagine this. If ANY of those planes had had an engine failure or any kind of rejected takeoff situation, the calamity that would have followed would have been tremendous. The lives potentially lost along with the total loss of irreplaceable aircraft is barely imaginable, which leads me to the second point. My hats off to the pilots for this carefully planned and choreographed sequence. It's a visual tribute to their skill and dedication, as well as those of their support crews, (maintainers, logisticians and the like).
those are B25s not B24s...
@@oddball0045 Typo on my part, and not proofreading thoroughly. Thank you.
They r not b24 but b25
The b24 is a 4 engine plane these were 2 engines
@@carlweiser5697 That was a typo on my part. I know they're B25 Mitchells, not B24 Liberators. As I said above, I did not thoroughly proofread before posting.
It's OK, we all make mistakes. You do have a good attitude about it, though.
Tragically, during filming, the British AD (Assistant Director) John Jordan who had worked on such films as 007's 'You Only Live Twice', 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', 'Battle of Britain' and many other films where he shot many of the aerial sequences. He was known to take chances and had previously been injured filming 'You Only Live Twice' in the helicopter sequence. He was hanging outside the aircraft to get shots and another helicopter was buffeted by wind and got too close, the rotor blade slicing his leg. It had to be amputated.
In Catch 22, he refused to wear a safety harness. When one of the other bombers buffeted the aircraft he was in, he was sucked him out of the open canopy and plunged 4000 feet to his death.
When I was at my brothers house in Australia one Saturday night because he’d made a load of home made booze. We decided to read out aloud different passages from Catch 22 , while drinking the (strong beer ) , we’ve never laughed so much ,and got pissed so much since that night ! That was 1973 , sadly my brother passed away in 2019 , but it is a cool memory amongst others that i shared with him , RIP. Stan I love you xx
"That's some catch!" "It's the best there is!" Gotta love it.
...gotta hate it...
1 of my favorite scenes. You could not get this movie on ANY military base because it was so true. I got a copy & had it played on ship's T.V. It became 1 of the most requested shows on the ship. EVERY military man can relate to this movie because something in the movie happened to them, or they know of something that happened to someone they know in the movie.
Still one of my favorite movies ever
A master piece of parody on bureaucracy with relevance to what is happening in democracies everywhere.
and the politician who boast patriotism but won’t expose themselves, relatives, neighbors and donators to a theater of war. One example is tRump!
@@sullivanspapa1505 Pretty much the way its always been, both sides of the aisle, try not to be butthurt, and don't forget that Lesco Brandon character.
@@sullivanspapa1505 lol typical stupid liberal. Trump hates war, he never started any new war during his year. Your black jesus, odumbo, otoh, started 3 new wars. Anyone from his family went to war? anyone from the clinton?
@@AlaricTheArcane You speak with forked tongue.
One of the best (if not best) books I have ever read....and one of the best (if not best) movies I have ever seen....I saw the movie first when I was about 13 years old and it changed my whole outlook on life....I read the book in my early 20's and got totally absorbed in it, as obviously it goes into a lot more details of each character....both are highly recommended.......
Agree... I just looked at IMDB rating of the film, and it said 7/10... I don´t understand.. To me, it is one of the best films ever, and I´ve seen a lot. How come the rating is so low? Too difficult? To slow? It is sad..
Yes. Great film adapted from a classic novel.
I finally got around to reading "22" a couple years ago, I thought it was going to be a depressing, sad story, which it kind of is in it's own way but by the time I finished, I had laughed all the way through it. I highly suggest reading the book before watching the movie. The movie is a work of art and well acted, not a bad scene in the whole movie.
0K, so what *_did_* you get out of both the film and the book?
I read the book and found this film to be a disappointment. Where is the cat sleeping on the man face?
I had a neighbor once that fought in Korea (Chosin Reservoir). He was once assigned to "burial detail" using a bulldozer to dig mass graves and bury NK and Chinese casualties. He got out of it by telling them "I need to get out of here. I'm starting to LIKE THIS too much (evil grin)"
That's the madness of war. They want you to commit atrocities to fellow human beings, but if you show other signs of psychopathy you're not fit for service. The catch 22 is inherent.
We forget, having seen this movie (in a theatre...imagine that???!!!) 50 years ago, how much these passages affected our life outlook, and how different life is now...how there is less freedom to take a absurdist view of life...how much less of a gap there is between authority and the ability to separate it. Over the last 20 years, and especially the last five, madness, irrationality and opportunism have overrun our world. Be sure to watch the segment posted where the Italian man explains to Art Garfunkel the lessons of survivial. "I'm 107 years old...how old are you?" "I'll be 20 next week." "You see???"
What an awesome ensemble cast in this movie. Really amazing.
Yes...every jew that was available was used...amazing !
So many New York actors, too. I think the joke used to be that you couldn't get a waiter in New York City restaurants because they were all in Mexico!
There's a story about Heller at a publisher's party in New York
He was being grilled by some wall street tycoon who asked him how long it took him to write Catch-22 and how much he made from the book/movie
When he got the answer, the tycoon scoffed that he made that much in a week
And Heller responded that he had something the tycoon would never have....
"Enough"
That wisdom is why Catch-22 is a masterpiece
Err your getting Vonnegut mixed up in this...
Bob Balaban, who plays Orr, is one of my favorite soft spoken actors ever since seeing him in this film. Later, when he co-starred in Close Encounters and had some great lines in that, he became much more famous. For those who remember, he worked with Voight before in 'Midnight Cowboy', though not a very appealing role. ;)
This movie beautifully sums up my experiences in Vietnam.
That all militaries are fundamentally dysfunctional and often incompetent?
The song remains the same
I love how Milo and Catchcart have spare hats in the jeep.
6:55 OMG, I forgot about this moment as the B25 crash lands and they're totally oblivious.
Brilliant stunt pilot with the one wheel touchdown before taking off again off-camera.
best take off scene ever with real B25's
The book is a masterpiece. The movie did the best it could, it would have needed to be hours long to do the book justice.
The casting of the movie was spot on increadible.
The book is always better. Catch-22 was probably my favorite book. I liked the movie because I read the book, but it's not a classic like the book.
Some material should be a mini-series.
I love how Yossairan flips Cathcart the bird! Lol 😂
Best part
I just flew in to Sing. from Norf. No rest. They started Battle E drills. The instructor wanted to everyone with thumbs up. 35 people in the line, I was in the middle & I gave him the finger. He never caught it. 🤣
That wasn't Yossarian. Alan Arkin plays the role of Yossarian who is a bombardier.
The pilot is Captain Orr played by Bob Balaban. Orr is the character who keeps ditching his plane so he could paddle to Norway.
@@kenchristie9214: No, I just reviewed the intro on you tube, Yossaian is sitting in the bombardier area flipping the bird to Cathcart.
@@PieAndChips No doubt.
You’ll never see this many B-25s in tandem again
This movie was released in 1971. That was the year the Universal Draft started and college boys were up for grabs. It apparently was not a money maker but no one knows how deep an impact it had on the perception of the war. Amazing that a bombadier in WW II figured this all out and wrote the book. I guess you could say it was about corporate warfare. The character played by Jon Voigt represented the head of General Motors symbolically.
Dear Mr Clueless: The Draft LOTTERY ended in1971. Before that, every 18 year old MALE had a draft number, based on his birthday, during the year. There was a lottery drawing, and the numbers were drawn in random order. The first 70 to 100 numbers would get a draft announcement, if they didn't have a deferment, for some reason.
Oh, and by the way, the military does not like draftees, and doesn't want them. The modern military needs more intelligence than most Democrat/Marxists have.
MacNamara's Morons proved that. (Another Democrat idea that failed.)
@@Jonascord 1973 "Draft", for those born in 1953, 646 men drafted.. My number was 96, I didn't receive an induction notice. 1972 "Draft", 49,514. Men drafted.
Yep we ALL work for milo.
"...wives &/or sweethearts..." Truly a military moment there.
Consider that the film was released only some 25 years after the depicted events,
and now it is 52 years since the film's release.
I saw it in 1970, it totally blew me away, then read the book.
Me too.
Amazing to think that the two- seat F-14 Tomcat of "Top Gun" fame is roughly the same size as a B-25 Mitchell.
Really, ? That’s nuts…but I guess that’s the difference between huge jet engines ,and Rotary engines maybe…also a jet plane is like riding a crotch rocket like my 200mph Hayabusa I used to have, and say a 50mph 1940’s bike, lol…speaking of top gun, I think it’s simply sad how they keep pushing the movies release date back due to covid and the money, thinking that some how those of us are going to endanger our health by going to the theater to see it instead of at home…if they had just let it be showed in 2020 many of us might of rented it by now many times, but their greed has turned me off, plus since I’ve got a 130 inch screen at home, I can still have all the same effects of the film while remaining healthy..l
@@markim5087 The empty weight of a B-25 is 8.8 tons The Empty weight of a f-14 is 19.8 tons, so the Tomcat is actually heftier.
"He loved his parents very much, even though they had always been good to him."
Butterfinger in 'Richard Benjamins' pocket.😉
One of the best movies ever made
When I was around 10 years old my father owned an airplane and we all flew from CA to Mexico to visit my grandparents who were traveling in their motor home in Mexico. We flew to Guymas and my father borrowed a car and we drove out to this deserted airfield in the middle of nowhere. I remember asking why we were there and he explained the movie and tried to describe what had been there. At that time around 1980 there were only a handful of huts and the landing strip so not much to see but pretty cool to say I've been there.
An amazing book, very good read. You'll get much more out of it reading it slowly or the second time around. Excellent and a must for anybody wanting to understand the craziness and stupidity of the US Armed Forces even today.
I read this book in high school for English class and I loved it. I let a friend borrow the book and I never got it back.
I read it out loud.
Not just US armed forces. Bureaucracy afflicts every military in history. The US just does a better job of observing it.
Not just in the military but also within the government and the corporate world.
That is the BEST Take-Off in any movie I've seen (and I saw this 50 years ago)
.... Like Chuck below said, "No CGI here."
I love this way of sound recording, leaving all the noise authentical till the extend, that sometimes it is hopeless to catch a word - as well as hopeless to get Catch 22. The tape recorder itself is an actor.
Yes, the sound direction is brilliant in this film. The use of wind noise and nothing else when Yossarian is told to 'help him'.
Such a twisted movie, I have lost count of how many times I've watched it. Classic
look at whats going on in that scene . they could have been merely sitting in a room somewhere having that discussion but instead they are in a noisy dangerous environment with bombers taxiing all around them. amazing movie!
My favorite part in the book is when the colonel and the chaplain are talking about praying for a tighter bomb pattern and the chaplain tells the colonel his sister is an enlisted man. The writing perfectly describes some officer's disdain for enlisted but Heller makes it hilarious. Art. Great art.
I had the privilege of getting a flight on the B-25 Executive Sweet which was the B-25 Vestal Virgin in the movie Catch 22. That was an awesome experience.
Richard Benjamin rarely seems to get the accolades for his role in this movie. Love it in the debriefing scene when he is oblivious to General Dreedle's order to stop moaning.
And the Baby Ruth candy bar in his pocket.
I love the sound of my motorbike when I open the throttle (Triumph Thunderbird 1600 - decatted). IT must have been absolutely incredible to witness and hear an entire squadron on full throttle hurtling down the runway.
Read the book! Also the hope, Cain mutiny, winds of war, war and remembrance. Really good books out there.
Came here from the mini series. Holy crap I should've seen the movie first.
The TV show completely lacked imagination. Although it covered more of the book it missed the pathos and atmosphere of the story. The film took greater liberties and covered a fraction of the book but got the essence of the story
My dad was in Fiji and played in the band and the natives and service men had a large black market going from C rations for laundry and house keeping to a jeep for a local tribal leader for land usage. They'd send a plane loaded with beer and jello up in time for dinner and happy hour to chill at altitude he said they played concerts for the natives and the O club and helped unload and load ships going here and there. All in all not so bad.
Finding all those authentic B25 "Mitchell" bombers AND pilots was quite an accomplishment -- but then they had to find mechanics and other ground personnel to service/fix all those planes.
Amazing!
Catch-22's budget could accommodate 17 flyable B-25s, and an additional non-flyable hulk was acquired in Mexico, made barely ferriable, and flown with its landing gear down to the Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, filming location, only to be burned and destroyed in the landing crash scene.
If I remember correctly, this type of “mass takeoff” was quite tricky and dangerous and was a very impressive stunt.
Much better than MASH in my opinion.
Anybody wants to know what life is like to be a military contractor, watch this movie... Trust me I know.
How the fuck did this scene not get an award?
It came out in 1970, the same year as another anti-war picture M*A*S*H which got several nominations , but lost to an epic war movie Patton
The book is a masterpiece. The movie did not do the best representation of the book. Though, it would be extremely difficult to do a complete work of the book in any book.
They tried with the mini series that came out a few years ago but it too fell flat. It began with a prologue that had nothing to do with the book.
Used to see many of these 25s at old Orange County Airport (now called John Wayne). They were at a makeshift air museum there at TallMantz Aviation. I scrounged around there many times as an airport rat.
A great performance from Voight.
Yes, from Jon, and the whole cast really.
Catch 22 is the book I had in my bag when I went to basic training in the Air Force. The Training Instructors were not happy to have an airman reading such anti-military trash...
The insanity of war!
The insanity of life!
Having served 8 years in the army including one tour in Vietnam, this movie isn't as crazy as you might 😮.
A few short years after this movie was released, I stood in Guaymas, Mexico on the very beach where it was filmed. All the buildings had been leveled and the runway had about an inch of sand on it- it took me a while to find it. I was maybe 15 years old, on vacation with my parents. The beach was deserted and beautiful. nothing but sand, scrub brush and the sand covered runway on land. The beach itself was incredible, but the water teemed with bright blue jellyfish. I mistakenly took one of the many lying on the sand for a short piece of fishing line and picked it up. I quickly let it go.
We stayed in a villa on top of a hill just a short distance away. There wasn't anything else around. Prices were cheap in Mexico back then, cheap enough that even a barely middle class family like mine could afford nice things.
Google earth map shows a huge sprawling resort there now...
I lived in San Carlos for many years and have walked that former movie runway many many times.
There is a nice hiking area in the hills, and the end of the runway is a nice trailhead.
There is nearly nothing remaining of the old movie set today. When I lived there there were still a few small buildings.
A satirical take on war .. "Catch 22" is Southwark Council who have told me a) I am required to, b) I am not allowed to, repair my below-pavement coal cellar .. a beautiful shot of the aircraft taking off - some of the reasons I enjoy this clip.
The scene w Anthony Perkins, Norman Fell & Bob Newhart deserves its own vid. Stalin, Churchill & FDR agree.
I watching this because I'm forced to be at home as a result of COVID-19 and because of COVID-19 I need to file compensation.
But in order to file for compensation I need to prove that I've been severally financially impacted and in order to prove that I need to contact the bank. But the bank doesn't have that service anymore because of COVID-19.
Therefore, I know how he feels and need to watch this to get a laugh out of life.
Try setting up an appointment online
Sorry abt that
I hope it all worked out. Real life Catch 22s are horrible. Stay strong.
Thanks this made my day xD
Covid 22?
6:55 The plane coming down the runaway behind Voight & Balsam and eventually "crashes" did not actually crash as shown. If you look at the burning wreckage you can see the trailing smoke from the flying aircraft going further down the runway beyond the "crash". In other words, the flying plane flew past a wreck already staged and burning. By the time the camera turned in that direction, the flying plane was well past the crash site and hidden behind it.
I'm well aware that it has been documented that a particular B25 was crashed specifically for the scene. What I'm saying is that the flying-by plane and the crashed-burning plane are not the same. It HAD to be staged like that in order to get it on film. If it were left to chance, it's possible the B25 could have crashed too close or too far away, or possibly injured or killed one of the actors.
I had an idea that's how was done, but wasn't sure until now. It's still one helluva scene though. Would never be allowed today, insurance companies would never underwrite it.
Not to mention the pilot. It would have been absolutely out of the question to stage such a stunt. Apart from the extreme danger, and the equally extreme likelihood of miss-timing, if one of the actors messed up his lines they would have had to crash another one. The burning B-25 was a real aircraft though. A barely flyable hulk acquired in Mexico. It was positioned in the crashed pose and then set alight. As an aside, when you see Minderbinder and Colonel Cathcart's hats blow off when the plane explodes Milo's hat falls in to the back of the jeep and Cathcart's goes shooting off in the blue yonder but they both reach into where the hand brake is to get a new one.
Specialist subject - the bleedin' obvious.
It's called a Texas Switch. Sometimes an accident happens and it's kept in, like the Pearl Harbor scene in Tora Tora Tora.
no shit dude
One of the best sequences in any movie, ever.
Where did the egg vanish to?
Hatch 22?
My mom, the pacifist in the family, showed this movie to us "boys" when it was in the drive-in. Dad always crowed about being in the navy in Korea. Stationed in Japan, never saw a single day of conflict. My bros and I all joined separate forces. Each of us got to deal with conflict and death. We all remember this movie.
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I've always felt that the structure of the book reflects the jazz music of the times. Yossarian is in the hospital at the beginning, the story moves out and returns to the hospital and moves out again and returns to the hospital at the end where Yossarian escapes. Maybe Heller was a fan of Miles Davis or someone like that? Maybe I'm crazy but Catch 22 is no help anymore.
It is structured that way because it is Yossarian's memory... we don't remember our lives in chronological order but in sequences related by sense and association. Also, Yossarian is traumatised by ... the incident ... in the plane during the Avignon mission and is unwilling to remember the details ... Snowdon's "secret". As the book progresses, more of the sequence of the Avignon mission is revealed. So this is an example of postmodernism where the author plays with the structure of the novel itself, knowing that the written word is not mirroring reality, but perception. There, there. There, there.
@@Checobeep Thanks for that- There, there was all he could say.
A great film with a talented cast. Wish there were more scenes with Major Major Major Major though.
My all-time favorite book. I read it years before the movie. I suggested to my wife that the best actor to play Yossarian was Alan Arkin, which prophetically came true. There are so many things depicted in this book that touched on truth in real life. Joseph Heller had an uncanny way of presenting twisted logic. Sadly, he never wrote anything comparable to this masterpiece.
My Father sit in Genua Portofino Tophill in a Tent, Radio Recon on B 25 Bord to Bord Wave, he send the 8,8 Greetings.... My Father was Ju 52 Radio Operator but grounded by Malaria Terziana. His Unit was Lufttransport Kommando Neapel.
88 greetings eh, that's one way of putting it.
1:11 imagine a reset for another take here. You couldnt take the next B-25 in the queue (lurking in the background), because it would not be “Dumbo”.
So i guess they would have to shut down and push Dumbo back to its starting point.
Or paint “Dumbo” on the side of the lurking B-25 for the sake of simplifying a retake.
Thank you for posting one of the best movies….ever!!
One of the very few movies that actually beat an already oustanding book.
How Mike Nichols went from The Graduate to this production monster an aced it, is beyond me.
What a piece of work.
The B 25 was actually a pretty good aircraft and I would suggest life expectancy in a B 17, B24, Lancaster or Halifax over Germany at this time would have been far far worse.
The Mitchell certainly was a stable and tough airframe. I'd have to look it up but anecdotally, I knew more living 25 aircrew than 26 aircrew. When I did a WWII interview project in the 80s, an interview witg a Marauder guy was considered a big win.
@@chpruc absolutely the B 26 when first deployed at low level had a horrid casualty rate hence the widow maker nickname albeit things got much better when used at higher altitudes, but interestingly the RAF never used them in Northern Europe unlike the B25 which I think was well liked amongst crews as reliable and strong.
the scene with milo and the crashed jet is wonderful
(its not a jet)
Buck Henry did as good a job as could have been done to reduce the sprawling story of the book to a two-hour film, but there is just SO much of the meat of the story that had to be left out to make it fit the time allowance that theaters desired.
For example, what happened to Doc after the plane incident is confusing and trivial in the film, but profound in the book.
But the very best part of the film was not from the book, but from the brilliant mind of Buck Henry as he adapted the script:
Milo: Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate.
Yossarian: What difference does that make? He's dead.
Milo: Then his family will get it.
Yossarian: He didn't have time to have a family.
Milo: Then his parents will get it.
Yossarian: They don't need it, they're rich.
(pause)
Milo: Then they'll understand.
Effing brilliant.
But you really should read the book, too, to get the full effect of the entire story between book and film.
Right! So chilling and Voight delivers the line with cynicism and pathos. The irony is, he's defending his friend who was killed by Voight's operations, only to be stabbed by his friend's lover who blames him. Truly maddening and oh so realistic.
@@robbiereilly Over the years of reading and watching the story I have shifted what I thought various scenes "meant" and which was my favorite and why.
The "Then they'll understand" scene is still my favorite, but I have come to see the final scene as something worth more study.
I now see it as a man, pushed beyond his limits, gleefully rather than defiantly throwing himself forward into mortal danger if not death itself.
He prefers a dangerous longshot chance at escaping the entire system supporting that lunacy, to a highly-ordered yet incompetently-designed system that serves the system itself, with humans being its minions.
What do you think about the final scene?
Lovely view of the planes taking off, and not CGI👍
The best part is when you realize being an army bomber crewman was one of the most dangerous jobs, specifically because of catastrophically bad planning, strategy, and terrible planes.
The B-24 was a much better plane than the B-17, meant to replace it, but they just kept flying B-17s anyway.
When you realize being a bomber crewman basically meant being an accessory to war crimes.
They gave up trying to precision bomb military targets and just started murdering civilians.
@@Heike-- they absolutely never did that, strategic bombing of the time always creates collateral damage when munitions factories and other military targets are built in city centers.
Even the Kyoto firebombing came about because the Japanese utilized cottage industry for war munitions and equipment.
The Germans and Japanese struck civilian targets as part of terror campaigns, but the Allies didn't have the bombers or airmen to waste on that sort of thing.
Think about it for two seconds, killing civilians only increases the resolve and number of recruits on average and in no way reduces the enemies ability to fight. When it costs airmen and planes every single mission you can only afford to strike legitimate military targets. The Nazis lost specifically because they wasted munitions on civilians.
Oh come on man. Yes they deliberately bombed Axis civilians. It's not some kind of secret. Curtis LeMay said that he would have gone to the rope like Halder and Goering if the Allies were on the losing side. @@russetwolf13
"Think about it for two seconds"? WTF? The strategy was called "dehousing the population", forcing the Axis to divert resources into keeping their people alive.
The Nazis lost because they did not have the logistical means (mainly oil) to sustain a war.
You're uneducated and need to stop contributing to conversations like this if you're going to spread disinformation.
What are the other 21 catches?
Can someone please post the names of the actors in this scene? Many of them look familiar, but I can't identify.
Jack Gilham, Alan Arkin, Martin Balsam, Buck Henry, Richard Benjamin
Stiens and Bergs and the usual suspects....it's NY casting by Rabbi Nichols....
I’ve never been in the military, but I have worked for the government, and working for the government made me lose my regret for never being in the military.
“Catch 22” or the untold story of the 12th AF in Italy.
Why have I never heard of this movie it looks great…I just found out about the remake as well..but I think the older war movies are much better just because they are using real planes and tanks, not fake computer junk..
The book was originally titled catch 18, but the publisher just released a book with 18 in the title. So what we call a catch 22, would have been a catch 18, as the term came from the book, not the other way around.
There is a Venn diagram of 3 intersecting sets: You must fly the required # of missions to complete your service, the psychologically unfit, and the scared, but sane group. Where these sets intersect is the catch-22: you have to keep flying, even if you are crazy, because the same group is sane. How do we find out the difference between the sane and insane? We'll the insane people have to self-report they are insane, which of course, is the thing a sane person would do. There is a certain beauty to the logic.
The Sound of the engines. Just great
....and what exactly was explained in this video clip?
Remarkable book.
Remarkable film too, although I cannot love it as I do the book.
I read only recently that the film was the saviour of many of the B25s still flying today.
Great film; great cast. But the nook was one of those not easily filmed.
Good cast, too.
Dear fellow book lover Banjo. I think you want the word " book ", and not nook near the end of your post.
But yes, sitting here late nodding to mentions of the brilliance of the novel, and how it helped shape my life.
One of my favorite books. In it somewhere - not sure if it's in the movie - catch 22 is they can do anything to you that you can't stop them doing.
I think I saw this in the theater but did not remember how stunning the cinematography acting camera work and staging and it also looks like how bloody dangerous it must’ve been to film this film
Am I right in thinking that was the last large mass flight of B-25s. Most of them are no longer in existence or no longer airworthy
As I recall, they searched and scrounged to find the B-25s.
These days, they would find 2 and use CGI tricks.
Great planes, great movie.
When they made the movie it was the worlds sixth largest airforce.
@@sizemorej Where did you hear that? Just off the top of my head I can think of (circa 1970) US, USSR, China, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Canada, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Argentina, Brazil, North Korea, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, South Africa, Mexico, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Libya, Yugoslavia, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Philippines, Japan, Switzerland, Austria, . . . etc.
Maybe the 6th largest airforce in the US? (Air Force, Navy, Air National Guard, Coast Guard, Marine Corps . . . )
@@server2a directors cut of catch 22
JB: Actually MOST of these planes are still in existence and flying. The infusion of cash and interest by this movie kick started the war bird restoration wave.
What happened to the egg? Continuity?😊
Some say Catch 22 is the best book about warfare ever written. I don't know, no one in my family has been involved in war. I think wars must be different. For the moment a Danish warship is fighting pirates off the coast of Nigeria. They do it to support the Danish merchant fleet. The circumstances are very different from WWII in Italy but the mission has its absurd elements anyway.
I had forgotten how well this part of the movie pinpoints the whole story!
@traybern Why?
An accusation like this should be substantiated, not just an exclamation.
@traybern I don't know you.
Director Mike Nichols wanted thirty-six B-25s to create the big U.S. Army Air Forces base, but the budget couldn't stretch to more than seventeen flyable Mitchells. An additional non-flyable hulk was acquired in Mexico, made barely ferry-able and flown with landing gear down to location, only to be burned and destroyed in the landing crash scene. The wreck was then buried in the ground next to the runway, where it remains to this day. - IMDB
I watched Catch 22 for the first time yesterday. Great group of actors. Dismal result. If you really want to enjoy Catch 22, read the book. It fleshes out all these characters and really drives home the story line Heller was trying to tell. The movie, compared to its contemporary movie Mash, is a dude.