Catch Us If You Can

‘Do you know the Dave Clark Five? / They were really great’, once sang the band Truck Stop. Today, the question is more justified than ever: hardly anyone still knows the band that was considered the only competition to the Beatles on the island at the time. Their frontman and namesake had worked as a stuntman in several films, just like his character here: Steve, who at one point, while filming a meat commercial, enervatedly snatches the high-end prop, a Jaguar E, and simply takes the bend with the model Dinah, a bunch of pursuers on his heels, including the rest of the band, who are Steve's colleagues. John Boorman's brilliant feature film debut is a sceptical swan song to Swinging London before it could even develop, a satire on the society of the spectacle, which is well aware of its own collaboration with it. And a road movie that loses the car in the middle. (Olaf Möller)

Introduction by Christoph Huber on 5 September 2024

Photo: Austrian Film Museum