The Catcher Was a Spy (2018)

January 19, 2018 (Sundance), June 22, 2018, release dates

Directed by Ben Lewin

Screenplay by Robert Rodat

Based on the book The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg by Nicholas Dawidoff

Music by Howard Shore

Edited by Mark Yoshikawa

Cinematography by Andrij Parekh

Paul Rudd as Moe Berg

Mark Strong as Werner Heisenberg

Sienna Miller as Estella Huni

Jeff Daniels as Bill Donovan

Tom Wilkinson as Paul Scherrer

Giancarlo Giannini as Professor Edoardo Amaldi

Hiroyuki Sanada as Isao Kawabata

Guy Pearce as Robert Furman

Paul Giamatti as Samuel Goudsmit

Connie Nielsen as Koranda

Shea Whigham as Joe Cronin

William Hope as John Kieran

John Schwab as Lefty Grove

Pierfrancesco Favino as Martinuzzi

Distributed by IFC Films

Produced by Animus Films, Serena Films, Palmstar Media, Finch Entertainment, Windy Hill Productions, Filmnation Entertainment

I was intrigued by The Catcher Was a Spy for many reasons when I first heard about it: Paul Rudd starring in a dramatic role, World War II espionage, a former Boston Red Sox baseball player turned wartime spy. What’s not to like?

The film is based on a nonfiction book by Nicholas Dawidoff, which is a fact-based examination of Moe Berg’s life. The film is a fictionalized account that gives viewers a quick glimpse into Berg’s days playing catcher with the Boston Red Sox and then spends most of its on-screen time concentrating on Berg’s spying for the Allied powers, specifically for the U.S. Office of Special Services (OSS), in Europe during World War II.

(This blog post about The Catcher Was a Spy contains spoilers.)

I enjoyed the laying out of the plot and the examination of Moe Berg’s personality in the film, although I understand that the film is much more kind to Berg than is the book. For example, the book (which I have not read) explains that Berg became something of a loafer and a ne’er-do-well after the war. For me, however, that makes him perfect for the world of espionage and intrigue, perfect for a shadowy, noirish world. The film also apparently lends more credence to the idea that Moe Berg was gay.

For more details about the book on which The Catcher Was a Spy is based, click here.

The film opens with the following white type on a black background:

In 1938, German scientists split the atom for the first time and the nuclear age was born.

The Nazis gave the task of building an atomic bomb to Nobel Prize–winning physicist Werner Heisenberg.

In response, the U.S. government sent a Jewish baseball player to assassinate him.

His name was Morris “Moe” Berg.

Based on a true story.

Then the black and the type fade to out-of-focus city lights, which come into focus with two men, whose backs are to the camera, walking down a cobblestone street. It is nighttime, but the streetlights give a soft yellow glow to the scene. More type tells viewers that this is Zurich, Switzerland, in December 1944. Viewers see one of the men cock a handgun, then walk away into the background on the cobblestone street, with the other man watching him from the foreground. As the man with the gun makes his way down the cobblestone street, the film’s title appears over him.

This shot reminded me so much of the front covers of pulp novels, and, of course, so many classic films noir are based on pulp novels. I don’t know if the director intended it to be, but I thought the opening of The Catcher Was a Spy was an homage to the films noir and spy films from the 1930s and 1940s. In fact, several plot details reminded me of specific films noir, for example:

◊ O.S.S. (1946), starring Alan Ladd

◊ Cloak and Dagger (1946), starring Gary Cooper

◊ Captain Carey, U.S.A. (1950), starring Alan Ladd

There are probably several more films with similar narratives, but these are the films that I have already seen.

A good part of The Catcher Was a Spy uses that soft yellow light from the film’s opening, the light that mimics the aura of streetlights. I remember noticing its use while watching the film, and I thought it worked well. Afterward, while taking screenshots to use in this post, I wondered if the technique might have been overused. Of course, most people watching the film will probably never take a screenshot and never notice this effect, and I don’t think I would have noticed how much it was used if I hadn’t taken the screenshots. It does make me wonder if the director and the cinematographer used the yellow lighting to soften and “age” the film a bit, something like adding sepia tint to photographs to make them appear older than they are.

Many online reviewers weren’t very enthusiastic about the film or about Paul Rudd’s performance, but I enjoyed The Catcher Was a Spy even more than I thought I would. And I thought Paul Rudd was great in the role of Moe Berg. I’m so used to seeing him in comedies that it was a welcome surprise to see him in something so different. This film shows that he can handle dramatic roles, too.

The most fun part of watching The Catcher Was a Spy was that it transported me back into the black-and-white world of film noir. If it had been filmed in black and white, I might have mistaken it for a film noir from the 1940s. The sets, the costumes, the level of intrigue—all of it worked. It’s a good old-fashioned story, with tension that slowly builds until the climactic scene. I had no idea what Moe Berg was going to do once he arrived in Zurich or what he would do once he found Werner Heisenberg, the German physicist who might or might not be working with the Nazis to build an atomic bomb. And because I had not read the book by Nicholas Dawidoff, I wasn’t even sure if Moe Berg would survive his assignment.

I always enjoy a story, whether on film or in print, that keeps me guessing. And I count the close similarity between The Catcher Was a Spy and films noir of the 1930s and 1940s as big plus. I have a feeling that other fans of film noir and classic films will enjoy The Catcher Was a Spy, too.