Catch Us If You Can

This commentary is part of the British Invaders blogathon hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts

Catch Us If You Cans’ destiny was to always play second fiddle and be overlooked. It is the girl whose older sister is the head cheerleader. The cheerleader in this case was A Hard Days Night, which had been unleashed upon the world the previous summer, and had ignited Beatlemania.

Thus, when Catch Us If You Can was released in April of 1965, it was facing an uphill struggle. The film had been conceived as a vehicle to showcase the Dave Clark Five, who were at that point were the Beatles closest competitor. As the DC5 suffered from their historical proximity to the Beatles, so did Catch Us if You Can, with AHDN, one of the seminal movies of all time. If the film gets mentioned at all these days, it is usually to remark that it was made to cash in on the popularity of A Hard Days Night. That is a shame, because in many ways CUIYC is the superior film.

Whereas A Hard Days Night is a largely plotless romp highlighting the youthful piss and vinegar of the Beatles, CUIYC is much more mature. It has its share of pedal-to-the-metal fun, but it is also infused with shades of cynicism about the process of stardom.

The man selected to helm Catch Us If You Can was a young Englishman named John Boorman. Up till that point, all of his directing had been in television documentaries. This was his big breakthrough into feature films. Boorman, of course, ultimately became one of Hollywood’s top directors, with a resume that includes Point Blank, Deliverance, and Hope and Glory. In this case he was being asked to replicate what Richard Lester had done for the Beatles, which in that place and time was a pretty tall order.

One peculiarity that hits you right away is that the band (Dave Clark, Rick Huxley, Lenny Davidson, Mike Smith, and Denis Payton) don’t play a band. They are stuntmen working an ad campaign featuring perky blonde Dinah (Barbara Ferris). This choice is a bit of a wasted opportunity, because it means that we don’t see any moments of the Five playing their hits onscreen. When you think of A Hard Days Night, you think first of the performances, such as the frenzy that accompanies “She Loves You”, or the sublime “And I Love Her” pulled out of thin air on a moving train. Here, we have to be content with only hearing the Five’s music on the soundtrack, and the movie suffers for it.

The real engine that propels CUIYC isn’t even the Five - It’s Barbara Ferris. Sick and tired from yet another day of shooting she runs off with Clark in a stolen Jaguar. It’s in these sequences that CUIYC starts to reveal its sly side. As the two gambol about the city, we are inundated with images of Dinah and her “Meat for Go” campaign. She’s everywhere – On buildings, fences, buses – and it’s the first clue that she is the harried rock star of the film, not Clark and his boys.

Catch Us If You Can settles down to become that well-worn cinematic convention – the road movie. Clark and Dinah talk about going off to some island to get away from the hassle, and there’s your plot, pretty much.

One of the first stops is an old, abandoned army training site, where our couple comes across a group of hippies hanging out, smoking some grass. The flower-power era was just in its infancy at this point, and this sequence is notable for how much Clark and Ferris seem out of place with these strange people. Asked if he has a “spliff” on him, Clark’s Steve clearly doesn’t know what the guy is talking about. The film goes to great length to portray the hippies in a comical, unserious light. The head of the group, (who is referred to as a genius) is asked to speak, and launches into a nonsensical spiel about a cat. It’s instructive to note that the sixties counter-culture is on full display in this film, but is treated with distain. Steve and Dinah reject the hippie culture just as they do the stifling commercial culture of the meat ads.

Next up is a ride with Guy and Nan, a self-proclaimed “old married couple”, played by Robin Bailey and Yootha Joyce, respectively. Coming directly from the hippie commune, our couple is now confronted by the embodiment of stiff-upper-lip British bourgeoisie. Arriving back at the couple’s home, the movie makes a point of splitting the couples up, and essentially reshuffling them. Guy shows Dinah his collection of memorabilia, and Nan and Steve talk in the kitchen. In both these conversations, there’s a frustrated sexuality bubbling under the surface for the older couple. Yes, they have the money and the fine home, but there is a sense of staleness in their marriage, and the arrival of Steve and Dinah brings this home to them.

The ad agency, in the meantime, does the logical thing when faced with a missing star. It creates a kidnapping angle and plays the resulting media storm for all it’s worth. In this way, CUIYC is surprisingly modern, anticipating media saturation of a story such as the missing Malaysia Air jet. It’s to the movie’s credit that it takes a peek behind the curtain that is Fame and looks at the dark side of having a life watched by all.

The film culminates in a wild costume ball, where Steve and Dinah, Guy and Nan, and the rest of the Five blend in the crowd as they are pursued by the police. This extended sequence is a lot of fun, in a slapsticky way, and it’s not by accident that Boorman dresses a couple of his characters like Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx. However, it’s easy to miss the fact that the soundtrack to all this is a DC5 song about frustration - “I Can’t Stand It.” There’s always something putting the brakes on the fun.

I’m always struck by how effective and poignant the conclusion of Catch Us If You Can is. Everything has come together. Dinah and Steve have found their island, but so have the ad agency and a swarm of reporters. The wild weekend is over for Dinah, and now she knows she will have to go back to the work of being the face of Meat For Go. Watch the expression on her face when Steve says goodbye – It’s one of regret and anguish. As Steve and the boys drive away, the camera looks back at a long shot of Dinah completely surrounded by reporters. It looks like nothing so much as a pack of feral hounds pursuing a deer.

IMDb

My 2012 commentary on Saturday Night and Sunday Morning