Born in Adria, Province of Rovigo, the son of the musician Nino, Catozzo graduated in law, then in cello at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice, and finally in set design and directing at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome.
[1] Catozzo debuted as a film editor in 1951 for Mattoli's My Heart Sings, and later worked with Alberto Lattuada, Mario Soldati and especially Federico Fellini whose films he edited during the fifties and sixties, most notably La Dolce Vita and 8½.
[1][2] 8½ was listed as the 41st best-edited film of all time in a 2012 survey of members of the Motion Picture Editors Guild.
[3] In 1956 Catozzo received the American Cinema Editors Award for King Vidor's War and Peace.
[1] The insistent demands of his colleagues forced him first to fabricate a hundred copies and later, to patent the machine which launched, in the early sixties, the mass production of the film splicer, something that gradually drew him away from his activity as an editor.