The film is lavish and expensive-looking. The extensive aerial shooting includes a spectacular plane crash that serves a simple background decoration in one scene. I don't recall if a similar crash occurs in the novel, but the way the characters ignore it is keeping with the novel's spirit. The cinematography by David Watkin is excellent, particularly the final shot of Yossarian (Alan Arkin) paddling away into the Mediterranean.
The film is impressively cast with only one weak link: Art Garfunkel as Nately. In his case, the casting director must have confused blandness with innocence. The rest of the cast members fit their bizarre roles admirably: Charles Grodin as the puritanical (and ultimately murderous) Aarfy, a young Martin Sheen as the nearly-mad Dobbs, and many others, including Jack Gilford, Anthony Perkins, Bob Newhart, Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin the previously mentioned Henry, Jon Voight, as well as a brief appearance by Orson Welles as the thoroughly unpleasant General Dreedle (A note to movie buffs: during the brief scene when Dreedle gives a medal to McWatt, played by Peter Bonerz, you have the director of Citizen Kane shaking hands with the director of Police Academy 6: City Under Siege).
The film has been critically panned, perhaps because contemporary critics felt it did not live up to the source material. It does, however, convey the intentions of the novel, it portrays the most important scenes (including the harrowing death of Snowden, seen many times in flashback), and, most of all, it humanizes the character of Yossarian. Alan Arkin was an A-list star for only a very brief period in the 1960's and 70's, and this is probably his greatest role from that time. It is difficult to think of any other actor who could play "Everyman on the edge" so successfully as he.
Three-and-a-half stars
Copyright 1997 by Dale G. Abersold
