60s Bands on Film is a series examining the handful of films made in the 1960s starring popular musical acts of the time.
The Dave Clark Five was a British band based out of Tottenham. Consisting of drummer Dave Clark, vocalist Mike Smith, guitarists Lenny Davidson and Denis Payton, and bassist Rick Huxley, the band formed in 1957. The group earned their first UK top ten single in January of 1964 with the track “Glad All Over.” The song actually knocked The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” from the top place on the chart, and for a brief time, they were considered serious rivals to The Beatles.
“Glad All Over” was their only UK Number 1, but they topped the US chart in December 1965 with a cover of Bobby Day’s song “Over and Over.” Additionally, The Dave Clark Five holds the distinction of being the second British Invasion group to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. They appeared on the show for two weeks in March 1964, the month after The Beatles enjoyed a three-week run, and would have eighteen total appearances on the show.
They were considered one of the British Invasion’s most commercially successful acts. They released seventeen songs that became top 40 hits in America in the three-year span between 1964 and 1967 before they disbanded in 1970. Their 1965 film Catch Us If You Can, released as Having a Wild Weekend in the United States, came at the height of their popularity and the time when it genuinely rivaled that of The Beatles, making it a fascinating curio of the British Invasion movement.
The Movie
The opening takes a much different approach than the first two films. The boys are not running from fans or coming off of a plane. No, they are all sleeping. It is only after an alarm wakes them that they start running, but it is just them running around a playground by themselves to the energetic “Catch Us If You Can.” From the start, the film is much more visually similar to A Hard Day’s Night than Ferry Cross the Mersey. It has that arthouse look to it that Lester created in AHDN, making it visually compelling and artful from the outset. Additionally, snappy, witty barbs between the band members begin almost immediately, making this a clear successor to AHDN and the most successful one so far in actually replicating its atmosphere and look.
However, this film is something quite different. The band members do not play themselves, and it primarily focuses on Dave Clark’s Steve and Barbara Ferris’s Dinah anyway, similar to Ferry Cross the Mersey. During the filming of a commercial for a meat campaign starring Dinah, stuntman Steve decides he is sick of his job and runs off with the model to find more excitement in life, leading to a series of adventures ranging from an army attack on a commune of hippies they come across to an opulent party in Roman Baths. All the while, the advertising executives behind the meat campaign exploit Dinah’s decision to run away and follow the couple as they try to escape to a new life.
It is considerably more serious and dramatic than the other two films thus far. It more so has the feel of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, minus the murder, than it does A Hard Day’s Night or Ferry Cross the Mersey as it comes to the overall plot. Clark and Ferris have genuine chemistry that makes their relationship both believable and compelling, so it almost does not matter that the film focuses almost solely on them. They both seem to pop out of the world around them, too, which critics of the time also seemed to note, regarding it as being very reflective of the cultural energy and atmosphere of the time. Clark, who previously worked as a stuntman, is particularly natural and charismatic onscreen, but more so in a brooding James Dean kind of way than an energetic Beatle one.
The film does not center around the music, but rather human relationships, rejection of societal expectations, and disillusionment. In that way, it is heavier in content and atmosphere than the other films considered in this project so far. Steve and Dinah are constantly on the run both from the physical threat of the advertising executives and the metaphorical one of conformity to a colorless culture. However, they do not necessarily solve their problems by the end. They face disillusionment and finding realities that fail to live up to their dreams and expectations. The ending is not happy in the slightest, and it is really the culmination of the commentary and conflicts that are at play throughout the entire movie.
The Music
The interesting thing about Catch Us If You Can is that the band members are not playing musicians. They are all playing fictional stuntmen. As such, they do not actually perform any of their music on screen. That makes this component of the review a little difficult to quantify. However, their music does comprise the soundtrack of the film, so all of the movie’s musical sequences are set to the band’s hits despite not seeing them perform those numbers.
The opening, set to “Catch Us If You Can,” is incredibly fun and certainly borrows from the “Can’t Buy Me Love” sequence of AHDN. Even if the sequence is not them performing the song, their inherent charm set to the rocking song starts the film off with considerable energy and pulls you in from the start. All three films thus far have been quite successful at these rollicking, engaging musical openings.
The party before Steve, Dinah, and the boys leave is set to “Having A Wild Weekend,” another particularly fun track. The sequence is a perfect snapshot of youth culture at the time, again conveying a tremendous amount of energy that matches with the group’s charms even without them visibly performing the song.
The titular track makes a reappearance at the big costume party in the film’s third act, a sequence that also includes several other songs from the group. This may be my favorite musical sequence in the film. Half the people at the party are dressed like Charlie Chaplin, and there are a wide variety of other costumes, which makes the ensuing chase by the police and advertising executives particularly amusing. The driving energy of the band’s songs in the background lends considerable energy to the scene that again still manages to work even without seeing the band playing it themselves.
Without giving too much away, the heartbreaking ending is underscored with the melancholic “When.” Contrasting the musical bookends of this film is fascinating because it largely reflects the film’s tone and journey. It begins in such a way that it seems like it will be a fun musical romp and ends up being something much more profound and deeply sad than expected, punctuated by the more somber finale sequence.
Verdict
I understand that it does not make much sense within the narrative, but I would love to see them actually perform a song in the movie. They have so much charm, and the aesthetics of the film would have made it something special, but I appreciate the consistency with the narrative and not forcing an irrelevant number in there just to do so. This commits more so to being a movie featuring band members than a movie about band members, and it does succeed in that which deserves commendation in its own right.
It is hard to know what to make of this movie. At least in the films I covered in this project so far, this is an outlier in a number of ways. It is hard to really call this a movie musical, as we never see them play any of their songs, and the music could hardly be called a focus or an essential aspect of the film. The movie is far more about Dave Clark than it is about the rest of them, focusing on him more so even than Ferry Cross the Mersey focused on Gerry Marsden. However, despite the numerous ways it distances itself from its predecessors, this is a uniquely compelling and well-made movie. It genuinely looks and feels like some of the most significant and acclaimed arthouse films of the time, and it deserves more recognition as such. It is hauntingly beautiful in a strange, unexpected sort of way, and I loved the way it was so surprising and unassuming in that regard.
Of the three films covered so far, this one explores its social commentary the deepest. The rebellious youth culture of the time is the contextual atmosphere of the film, while Steve and Dinah’s physical and metaphorical rejection of the society around them is the centerpiece. It captures the pushback against authority of the time in a uniquely artistic way, with a rocking soundtrack comprised of some of the band’s best songs, creating an engrossing journey and search for meaning outside of societal expectation that explores human relationships and disillusionment. In short, Catch Us If You Can is surprisingly deep. It is an outlier among the other British Invasion films of the time but in the best possible way. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what it is about this movie, but there is something quite special about it, even if it does not fully fit in with the others in the subgenre. Ottawa Citizen reviewer Gordon Stoneham captured it well in his review of the film, writing Catch Us If You Can “is a rather odd vehicle to spotlight a group of teen-age idols, but, on the other hand, it shows them in a new and quite pleasant light.”