9° FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE CINEMA GIOVANI
Retrosective - New British Cinema 1956-1968
CATCH US IF YOU CAN
Country: UK
Year: 1965
Duration: 91'
Steve, Lenny, Rick, Mike and Denis, freelance stuntmen, are working on a television commercial for meat in London when Steve and the star of the show, Dinah, decide to get away from it all. Heading for an island that Dinah hopes to buy off the coast of Devon, they encounter a group of beatniks and that results in the destruction of their car. A predatory middleaged couple, Guy and Nan, give them a lift, where they offer them hospitality in their elegant home. The advertising firm, on the instructions of the executive Zissell, who is fascinated by Dinah, has issued a story too the effect that Steve has kidnapped her. Guy and Nan persuade their visitors, who now include the rest of Steve's group, to attend the Arts Fancy Dress Ball where Zissell's henchmen and the police also converge upon the scene. The youngsters elude their pursuers. On Dinah's island, Zissell himself is waiting for them. Worse still, he has walked there, for at low tide it isn't an island at all. Refusing to play a part in the press stunt that Zissell has lined up, Steve leaves Dinah to face the photographers alone.
"Passing through the steps of a 'picaresque' journey, the protagonists rediscover 'depth' a particular quality of the earth, the countryside, and English customs. The sense of the road, hence, comes not only from the goal that the two fugitives are fixed on, but is inherent in the process itself, in the rediscovery of objects and situations that the run of the media overlook. not considering them newsworthy and so eliminating their chance of coming into the collective memory. The film develops in that vein along the lines dictated by the winter countryside. (It was a necessary choice. They could only 'shoot' in that season). There is a real doubling of the initiatory process undergone by the characters. There is a crisscrossing of places that have lost the role that they usually play (especially in the summer). There are deserted hot springs, and countryside no longer under cultivation. But they are like natural parks where one can walk contemplating a land which simply puts itself on show. The places take on a new unusual role. 'They are places put to sleep, empty lands'." (Adriano Piccardi, John Boorman, Firenze, La Nuova Italia 1982, pp. 1011)
Biography
film director
John Boorman
(Shepperton, United Kingdom, 1933), after debuting in radio and at Southern Television as a film editor, became the director of BBC’s documentary section. Catch Us If You Can was his first fiction film. He next directed Point Blank and Hell in the Pacific in the United States; both films were very successful and were harbingers of his most exemplary film, Deliverance (1972). His career progressed with many films that followed in the traces of his established themes: from Zardoz (1974) to The Tailor of Panama (2001), from John Le Carré, by way of Excalibur (1981) and The Emerald Forest (1985).
FILMOGRAFIA
Catch Us If You Can (Prendeteci se potete, 1965), Point Blank (Senza un attimo di tregua, 1967), Hell in the Pacific (Duello nel Pacifico, 1968), Leo the Last (Leone l’ultimo, 1970), Deliverance (Un tranquillo weekend di paura, 1972), Zardoz (id., 1974), The Exorcist II: The Heretic (L’esorcista II - L’eretico, 1977), Excalibur (id., 1981), The Emerald Forest (La foresta di smeraldo, 1985), Hope and Glory (Anni 40, 1987), Where the Heart Is (Dalla parte del cuore, 1990), Beyond Rangoon (Oltre Rangoon, 1995), Two Nudes Bathing (ep, cm, 1995), The General (1998), The Tailor of Panama (Il sarto di Panama, 2001), In My Country (id., 2004), The Tiger’s Tail (2006), Queen and Country (2014).
Cast
& Credits
Director: John Boorman.
Screenplay: Peter Nichols.
Director of photography: Manny Wynn.
Editor: Gordon Pilkington.
Art director: Tony Wollard.
Music: The Dave Clark Five.
Sound: Arthur Ridout.
Cast: Dave Clark (Steve), Barbara Ferris (Dinah), Lenny Davidson (Lenny), Rick Huxley (Rick), Mike Smith (Mike), Denis Payton (Denis), David Lodge (Louis), Robin Bailey (Guy), Yootha Joyce (Nan), David de Keyser (Zissell).
Production company: David Deutsch per la Bruton Film Productions.
Screenplay: Peter Nichols.
Director of photography: Manny Wynn.
Editor: Gordon Pilkington.
Art director: Tony Wollard.
Music: The Dave Clark Five.
Sound: Arthur Ridout.
Cast: Dave Clark (Steve), Barbara Ferris (Dinah), Lenny Davidson (Lenny), Rick Huxley (Rick), Mike Smith (Mike), Denis Payton (Denis), David Lodge (Louis), Robin Bailey (Guy), Yootha Joyce (Nan), David de Keyser (Zissell).
Production company: David Deutsch per la Bruton Film Productions.