Humour and Irony in Dutch Post-war Fiction Film

Front matter

PETER VERSTRATEN

HUMOUR AND IRONY IN DUTCH POST FICTION FILM

WAR

Table Of Contents

Preface 9

INTRODUCTION 13

Overview of Studies on Dutch Cinema 15

Preface

If the ‘comedian is the anthropologist of our humdrum everyday lives,’ as Simon Critchley remarks in his On Humour (66), then it would make sense to take this study on humour and irony in Dutch fiction film as an (oblique) ‘mirror of Holland.’ Let me say right here that I would not discourage readers to consider this study as a ‘metaphoric barometer’ of certain Dutch mentalities, but do not succumb to that temptation too easily. For humorous remarks and comic scenes can have ‘local and historical’ dimensions, indeed, but they can also be (relatively) ‘universal and timeless’ as well, and the boundaries are very difficult to draw. Moreover, any crystal clear claim would perhaps meet the obvious objection that humour is not just a cultural phenomenon, but also a matter of personal taste. Suppose that I were to argue that the people in the vicinity of Maaskantje are more likely to appreciate the crude jokes of the ‘New Kids’ from Maaskantje than people from Amsterdam, then of course anyone would be right to protest ‘I am from Maaskantje myself, and I do not like them at all’ or ‘Iam from Amsterdam, and I think them very funny.’ Thus, if I had set myself the task of pinpointing to what extent humour and irony can be called ‘typical’ for a specific region or exemplary of a particular decade, I would have moved onto very shaky ground.

My main reason for taking up this project was more modest. First, as I will explain in the Introduction, the subject of Dutch fiction cinema has been blatantly underrepresented in the academy so far, and this neglect becomes all the more unfair with the increase in popularity of Dutch films at the box office in recent years. Second, it struck me that a healthy - unhealthy to others, perhaps - dose of humour and irony seems to be a key ingredient of the most noteworthy titles in the history of Dutch fiction cinema, from the phenomenal commercial successes of CISKE DE RAT and FANFARE in the 1950s to more recent winners of the Golden Calf for Best Film, such as the deadpan horror-pastiche BORGMAN and the happy slacker rom-com AANMODDERFAKKER. Combining these two facts, it felt as if the subject of this book was handed to me on a plate. Moreover, in response to academic tendencies since the mid- 1990s that have convincingly proposed the methods of ‘cultural analysis’ over strict cultural-historical approaches, I decided to include what Mieke Bal has called ‘rigorously, perhaps provocatively contemporary readings’ of the films (129). I did not want to restrict myself to discuss film X as merely a product of a particular era, since I can neither know nor fully understand what it is to watch a film from the 1960s with eyes of a ‘hippie.’ Viewing habits have changed considerably - and the films in chapter 5 clearly give proof of this - and therefore I chose to favour a certain deliberate anachronism. Cinephiles with a preference for cult are much aware of this mechanism in the practice of their spectatorship: in retrospect, a once-derided picture does not seem that bad at all, and it thus deserves re-appreciation as a curious but wonderful case or as an underestimated forerunner of later developments. I am much more interested in detecting affinities between films on the basis of the forms of humour they share than in sticking to chronological accounts or in reconstructions of historical contexts, which both have been quite common in journalistic books on Dutch cinema. Hence, for me, films enter ‘in dialogue’ with one another, potentially travelling in a time machine: discovering common denominators between a film from 1967 and one from 2013 can make us see them both ‘anew.’

The reader has to bear in mind that the language of these films is Dutch. That means that when I use quotation marks to indicate the words of a character, the quotation is not exact. The translation is either provided by me or it comes from the English-language subtitles from the DVD. In situations where characters use English terms, as they do occasionally, I have italicized the quotation or part of the statement.

It was impossible to navigate through all these films, including the many anecdotes that surround them, without the help of many others who were often all too happy to converse about their experience with Dutch cinema, either as makers and/or consumers. My gratitude in particular goes to my two proofreaders, Ernst van Alphen, professor of Literary Studies in Leiden, and Hans Beerekamp, a journalist at NRC Handelsblad, writing on film since 1977. Though his main subject has become television from 2003 onwards, Beerekamp continues to exercise his keen expertise on cinema for the website schimmenrijk.nl, dedicated to obituaries of film actors, directors, producers, cinematographers and composers. I am much obliged to filmmaker Dave Schram, who filled many gaps in my collection of Dutch films by offering me a number of missing titles. I would also like to thank Het Nederlands Filmfonds [The Netherlands Film Fund] for their generous subsidy and I am grateful that the board members of the NSC [Netherlands Society of Cinematographers] were kind enough to support this project, both mentally and financially.

While writing this book, my father, Theo Verstraten, passed away, and it is to his memory that I dedicate this study. In January 2014 I made a trip with him and my mother to London to visit their then newly born grandchildren, the twins Hero and River Ejiofor. And, of course, many thanks to two of their other grandchildren who happen to be my very own daughters, Febe and Bodil, cinephiles-to-be. You know how to brighten up my life, just as my sevgilim Fatma does.

PREFACE

Apart from the art-house cinema Het Ketelhuis, the self-declared ‘canteen of Dutch film’ founded in 1999, Dutch film is only consistently celebrated during the ten days of the annual Netherlands Film Festival (NFF), which started as the Netherlands Film Days in 1981. In the 2007 festival, a jury chaired by Jeltje van Nieuwenhoven presented the Canon of Dutch Cinema (Canon van de Nederlandse Film) in order to stimulate an interest in national productions. The jury decided to restrict the list to only 16 titles, covering a huge diversity of types and genres: shorts, documentaries, black & white, silent films, box-office hits, comedy, animation, experimental films, film festival successes and youth cinema. On the one hand, the canon bows to popular entertainment - the ‘low-class’ humour of FLODDER (Dick Maas, 1986) and the ‘parochial’ comedy FANFARE (Bert Haanstra, 1958) being the most obvious examples. On the other hand, the canon includes (‘serious’) artistic cinema - with the experimental shorts IX KOM WAT LATER NAAR MADRA [THAT WAY TO MADRA] (Adriaan Ditvoorst, 1965) and LiviNG (Frans Zwartjes, 1971) at the other end of the spectrum of commercial endeavours. Except for some critical remarks about a few missing titles - such as Paul Verhoeven's SOLDAAT VAN ORANJE [SOLDIER OF ORANGE] (1977), George Sluizer's SPOORLOOS [THE VANISHING] (1988) or Mike van Diem's KARAKTER [CHARACTER] (1997) - the Canon of Dutch Cinema has met remarkably little controversy.'

In addition to congratulating the jury on its balanced selection, the absence of a heated debate about the canon can be taken as a sign that both critics and the general public are no longer as adverse to Dutch cinema as in previous decades. There has always been ample admiration for a strong documentary tradition in the Netherlands (by, among others, Joris Ivens, Herman van der Horst, Johan van der Keuken, Heddy Honigmann).? There has also always been sympathy for the so-called ‘family films,’ aimed at a young audi-

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14 | ence and their parents. This genre of the family films, pioneered at first by Henk van der Linden and then by Karst van der Meulen,’ has gradually grown into full-blown maturity since Ben Sombogaart's MIJN VADER WOONT IN RIO [My FATHER LIVES IN RIO] (1989) and HET ZAKMES [THE POCKET-KNIFE | (1992), with MINOEs [MISS MINOES] (Vincent Bal, 2001), HET PAARD VAN SINTERKLAAS [WINKY'S HORSE] (Mischa Kamp, 2005), KAUWBOY (Boudewijn Koole, 2012), and the adaptations of Carry Slee novels, produced by Shooting Star Filmcompany.‘ The Dutch (narrative) fiction feature, however, has in general met less enthusiasm, and if a canonical list had been presented in the mid-1990s, the overall reaction would probably have been one of considerable derision. In that period, Dutch cinema was so strikingly unpopular that the idea of a canon alone would have been greeted with jeers and might have provoked a contemptuous remark like: Is the idea of publishing a selected number of titles a means to cover up for the lack of quality of the non-selected films?

Even though the attitude towards Dutch cinema has become much more positive over the years, in critical reception as well as at the box office, the persistent prejudices have not died out, as websites with a film forum, like moviemeter.nl, testify to. Among the responses to Dutch narrative fiction films, which not always exceed the level of a gut feeling, there are two recurring ones. The first one can be paraphrased like this: "Dutch cinema consists of a too frank display of nudity and sex, which it tries to legitimize as a functional display.’ The portrayal of sex in the notable box-office successes of BLUE MOVIE (Wim Verstappen, 1971) and TURKS FRUIT [TURKISH DELIGHT] (Paul Verhoeven, 1973), deeply ingrained in collective memory, led to a series of subsequent pictures over the years which also played this card, betting on it that the pair of ‘nudity and sex’ offers a road to fame. Every attempt to make a film that even remotely resembles TURKS FRUIT - from KORT AMERIKAANS (Guido Pieters, 1979) to BRANDENDE LIEFDE [BURNING LOVE] (Ate de Jong, 1983), and from DE GULLE MINNAAR [THE GENEROUS LOVER] (Mady Saks, 1990) to ZOMERHITTE [SUMMER HEAT] (Monique van de Ven, 2008) - only worsened the reputation of Dutch cinema and reinforced the prejudice that nudity and sexare part and parcel of it, regardless ofthe many films which do without this combination.” The second one goes like this: ‘In principle, I am not a fan of Dutch films, but I would like to make an exception for this one.' Apparently, a good or decent Dutch picture is considered to be a deviation from the general rule that the quality is below average.

This study is not meant to correct the eventual unjustness of these prejudices, for that would be Sisyphean labour. For every great Dutch picture, critics can easily respond with a number of failures. For every international success - like Academy Awards for "Best Foreign Language Film' for DE AANSLAG [THE

ASSAULT] (Fons Rademakers, 1986), ANTONIA [ANTONIA'S LINE] (Marleen Gorris, 1995), and KARAKTER - sceptics might cite the embarrassing statistics that BORGMAN (Alex van Warmerdam, 2013) was the first Dutch film to be selected for the main competition in Cannes in 38 years. Instead of combating prejudices, I intend to address the fact that there is no proper educational forum to debate Dutch cinema. Hence, Humour and Irony in Dutch Post-war Fiction Film has to be considered as only a ‘modest proposal’ to address the almost total neglect of Dutch cinema in the academy.

OVERVIEW OF STUDIES ON DUTCH CINEMA

In order to illustrate that Dutch cinema lacks a proper institutionalization, let me sketch the programmes of the various departments of Language and Culture at Leiden University. In Japanese studies some attention is devoted to Japanese cinema; in Chinese studies the same for Chinese cinema, and this list can easily be extended: Korean cinema, Turkish cinema, Iranian cinema, Brazilian cinema are all covered in Leiden - not very comprehensively, but nonetheless. Even though the films are not much valued for their specific cinematic potential, but as a means to deepen students’ understanding of the culture in which they have been produced, the attention to cinema in foreign language departments is more consistent than in Dutch studies, although there are signs that this might change for the better in the near future.

It is perhaps a matter of looking at tea leaves, but a (Western) scholar with an interest in Japanese, Chinese or Iranian culture is like an ‘omnivore’: fascinated by any peculiarity of that faraway country - not only literature and films but also popular songs, sports, food, up to the Japanese obsession with manga comics and Hello Kitty. These preferences are not strictly hierarchically marked in advance. By contrast, a Dutch scholar studying his own culture behaves like someone with refined taste, steeped in a tradition in which one is educated to distinguish high from low culture. Due to a conventional bias favouring literature over film - let alone, comic strips or popular (dance) music - scholars in Dutch studies have, at least until recently, a blind spot for (the national) cinema.

If Dutch cinema is addressed at universities, it usually takes place in an incidental course under the umbrella of literature, like ‘Novel and Film.’ The policy which underlies such a course seems obvious: Dutch film can only be made to fit the curriculum on the condition that itis associated with the more venerable belles-lettres. And even if such a course were to give film (adaptations) pride of place over novels, it risks affording film the role of sidekick to literature, the more since the status of the written-source texts predominantly

16 | determines the selection of films. This aside, however, is not meant to strike a sour tone, because a course like ‘Novel and Film’ at least offers a way for Dutch film to position itself in the academy.

Given the fact that there is no substantial interest in Dutch cinema at universities, it is no wonder that the output of studies on Dutch cinema has been quite meagre over the years. The most profound academic publications are not dedicated to the post-war feature films, but to film culture preceding 1940, like the introduction of sound in Dutch cinema (Karel Dibbets); a study called Hollywood in Holland on ‘Filmfactory’ Hollandia which produced 60 films in between 1912 and 1923, the year of its bankruptcy (Ruud Bishoff); a study on the Nederlandsche Filmliga (Céline Linssen, Hans Schoots, Tom Gunning); a dissertation inspired by the collection of Jean Desmet (Ivo Blom), which was also the basis for an exhibition in EYE and an accompanying volume (Rommy Albers and Soeluh van den Berg); reactions to film as a new medium in the Netherlands in the period 1895-1940 (Ansje van Beusekom), and a study on the role of German emigrants on the Dutch film industry in the 1930s (Kathinka Dittrich). And of course, the internationally oriented Joris Ivens - whose work spans several decades, from the short DE WIGWAM [THE WIGWAM] (1911) to UNE HISTOIRE DE VENT [A TALE OF THE WIND] (1988) - has attracted some bookish attention (Kees Bakker on the documentary context, André Stufkens on Ivens’ connection to art, Hans Schoots’ biography, Living Dangerously). Dorothee Verdaasdonk wrote a dissertation on Dutch cinema, covering the years from 1960 to 1983, but her approach was sociological rather than textual-analytic. In BEROEP: FILMMAKER [PROFESSION: FILMMAKER] (1990), she examined under what socio-economic conditions Dutch filmmakers could practice their profession: what financial resources were available; what was the role of the Dutch Vocational School for Film and Television; does the family background of the director have an influence? Another sociological perspective was adopted by Bart Hofstede who examined the influence of the government and of film organizations like the Bioscoopbond as well as the growing impact of critics upon Dutch film production in the post-war period. Notwithstanding these studies, when the narrative fiction film in the last five decades has been addressed, it was much more common to adopt a journalistic perspective than an academic one: Rob van Scheers on Paul Verhoeven, Mieke Bernink on Fons Rademakers, Joost Ramaer on Alex van Warmerdam, Hans Heesen on George Sluizer, Ruud den Drijver on Wim Verstappen, Hans Schoots on Bert Haanstra, although the latter was a biography, published in the form of a dissertation." Moreover, a number of websites focuses on Dutch cinema, of which Neerlands Filmdoek (http://www.nlfilmdoek.nl/) and the Nederlandse Film Database by René van Dam (http://www.filmtotaal.nl/ nederlandse film) are the most noteworthy.

Further, in his Hollands Hollywood (1995), freelance journalist of NRC Handelsblad Henk van Gelder gave a solid overview of 60 years of Dutch feature films, starting with WILLEM VAN ORANJE (G.J. Teunissen, 1934) and ending with oe (Theo van Gogh, 1994). It catalogued 337 films with brief descriptions, (amusing) anecdotes and an impression of their reception; only 27 of the films were considered so relevant that they got more than one page. Van Gelder does not resist the temptation to cite the lines from particularly damning reviews, which, it must be said, can offer amusing reading. In defence of the slightly sarcastic perspective of Van Gelder, who originally had in mind to use for a motto Wim T. Schippers’ hilarious phrase, ‘A Dutch film is no guarantee of an empty auditorium,’ I would like to point at the year he wrote his book: 1994 is about the worst year for Dutch cinema in the post-war era. As the last line of Van Gelder's study mentions: That very year, no more than 126,000 tickets, which is less than 1 per cent ofthe total number of tickets, were sold for films made in the Netherlands (372). This statistic turns the title Hollands Hollywood into an ironic pun: while Hollywood is known for its commercial policy, the adjective "Hollande" is rather associated with box-office poison.

In 1995, Robert Jan Westdijk's low-budget ZUSJE [LITTLE SISTER] was hailed as an innovative debut feature, which marked the beginning of a recovery from the annus horribilis 1994. This film is the starting point for a survey of Dutch cinema between 1995 and 2005 in the book De broertjes van Zusje [The Little Brothers of Little Sister], edited by film critics Mariska Graveland, Fritz de Jong and Paul Kempers. The tone is one of moderate optimism, justified by some critical successes - DE POOLSE BRUID [THE POLISH BRIDE] (Karim Traidia, 1998), WILDE MOSSELS [WILD MUSSELS] (Erik de Bruyn, 2000), VAN GOD Los [GODFORSAKEN!] (Pieter Kuijpers, 2003) and SIMON (Eddy Terstall, 2004) - which outweigh the failures and for the fact that the numbers of viewers for Dutch cinema have risen, from the 1 per cent in 1994 to 13.6 per cent in 2005. Since then, the situation has further signs of improvement. In the year 2013, for instance, the share was 20.5 per cent, and 21 Dutch films attracted more than 100,000 moviegoers.

In addition to the books mentioned above, three studies, all from the year 2004, deserve special mention as particularly penetrating contributions. The first one is Schoots' enjoyable study Van FANFARE tot SPETTERS, which took a cultural-historical approach. Sketching the cinema between the years 1958 and 1980 Schoots relates the predominantly provocative themes in a number of movies to the revolutionary atmosphere in this period. Hence, he considers national cinema as an expression of contemporary issues within society. Do the films under analysis succeed in capturing the so-called zeitgeist and can the white screen function as a ‘mirror of Holland'?? This cultural-historical perspective offers an insight into a possible relation between art and society,

18 | but the drawback of this approach is the tendency to analyze the films insofar as they can illuminate their (social) context. Hence, the films are not primarily debated for their intrinsic value, but they are rather used as a kind of reflection of the context as its original model. The Cinema of the Low Countries, edited by Ernest Mathijs, presents itself as a volume that seeks a balance between contextual readings and textual analysis. The 24 articles of about ten pages each put a particular film central stage. Half of the contributions are devoted to Dutch films, and in addition to the ‘usual suspects’ like TURKS FRUIT and SOLDAAT VAN ORANJE, films like KOMEDIE OM GELD [THE TROUBLE WITH MONEY] (Max Ophüls, 1936) and TWEE VROUWEN [TWICE A WOMAN] (George Sluizer, 1979) were included in the selection. The volume is significant, since it attempts to fill such a yawning gap that one is willing to accept the ‘glaring omissions’ of which Mathijs himself is so well aware (2).

A study which is at the same time very ambitious in its effort at completion and strikingly unpretentious in its deliberate choice for a totally random structure, is Film in Nederland, compiled by a number of researchers affiliated with the former Filmmuseum, now called EYE. It contains in alphabetical order brief descriptions, anecdotes and some thematic similarities regarding 200 Dutch films. The sheer breadth of subjects covered is necessarily at the cost of in-depth analyses. Due to its wide range, Film in Nederland reads like a database, but one ofthe advantages of this book is to see how flexible the term "Dutch cinema' is interpreted by the editors. They endorse elastic criteria for the obvious problem of deciding when a film is to be considered as ‘Dutch.’ CISKE DE RAT (1955) was directed by the German Wolfeang Staudte and some of the crew members were German as well, but the film counts as Dutch, if only for the Dutch actors, the Dutch producer, the Dutch locations, and the Dutch novel it was based upon. Another entry is more or less the opposite, since MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH (1976) is shot in California with an American cast and crew, except for camera man Bert van Munster and director René Daalder. PROSPERO’S BOOKS (Peter Greenaway, 1991) is included as a Dutch film because this international co-production had set designers Jan Roelfs and Ben van Os on board, was produced by Kees Kasander and Denis Wigman, and had some Dutch actors in minor parts. Hence, the editors of Film in Nederland used flexible guidance for selection as entries, which is comparable to the criteria the Netherlands Film Festival has set for its competition.

In 1989 the Golden Calf for Best Film at the festival was awarded to the Spanishlanguage film Bopa SECRETA [SECRET WEDDING] by the Argentinian-born Alejandro Agresti, because of the nationality of its producers, Kasander and Wigman. The Dutch-Palestinian Hany Abu-Assad won the same main prize in 2005 for PARADISE NOW, but it could not be the Dutch submission to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, because in that case the rules are stricter. Since the film is in Arabic, it could only be submitted on behalf of Palestine. And what about the career of the cosmopolitan director George Sluizer, who made his stunning debut feature JOÃO EN HET MES [JOÃO AND THE KNIFE] (1972) in Brazil and LA BALSA DE PIEDRA [THE STONE RAFT] (2002) in Portugal and Spain; UTz (1992) was shot in the Czech Republic with Armin Mueller-Stahl, THE VANISHING (1993) was the American remake of his aforementioned SPOORLOOS, THE COMMISSIONER (1998) was set in Brussels, and just before his death he finally finished DARK BLOOD (2012), starring the late River Phoenix who had passed away in 1993 during shooting. These are just a few examples of many borderline cases, which illustrate how problematic it is to think in terms of absolute and strict national demarcations. Since the practice of international co-productions is becoming more customary than ever, this is all the more reason to see Dutch film along a continuum.?

LIKE SHARING A SECRET CODE

A main rationale behind this study is to countervail the underrepresentation of Dutch narrative cinema in the academic world, but one has to prevent oneself from ‘drowning by numbers.’ It would be overambitious to cover the whole domain from (action) comedy to avant-garde cinema. Writing a study on national cinema always risks being an arbitrary endeavour. The concept of national cinema erroneously suggests that the country of origin of the filmmaker, cast and/or crew is a more predominant factor for a useful taxonomy than economic, industrial, artistic and/or generic ones. It is easier to mention the differences in subject matter, film style, target audience and so on, of the films of Paul Verhoeven, Nouchka van Brakel, Dick Maas, Nanouk Leopold, Mijke de Jong and Alex van Warmerdam than to sum up what unites them. Maas has perhaps more in common with the Farrelly brothers who made THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (1998) than with any of the other mentioned here; Leopold with French director Bruno Dumont; De Jong with the Belgian Dardenne brothers; Van Warmerdam with the Finnish Aki Kaurismäki.

Even though ‘national cinema’ may not be the best criterion for analysis, in common parlance it is still a vibrant concept. Each and every national cinema is haunted by the question: Which films are characteristic of the country at hand?” From an academic perspective, it is a daring, almost impertinent, question, because any hint at a clear-cut answer always already sounds too definitive. By contrast, from a journalistic perspective, it seems the most obvious of questions to ask whether there is such a thing as a typically Dutch film. Three global positions to this question can be derived from the first episode of the documentary series consisting of nine parts, ALLEMAAL FILM: DE NEDERLANDSE FILM VAN 1945 TOT NU TOE [IT’S ALL FILM: DUTCH FILM SINCE 1945].* First, Frans Weisz replies with a rhetorical question: Does the label of Dutch cinema not denote limitations as if a filmmaker has to be caught in a straitjacket? Itis not surprising that the labelis not productive for Weisz, since he has always adored Italian cinema, which is most evident from his grandiose film HET GANGSTERMEISJE [A GANGSTERGIRL] (1966). Second, as Paul Verhoeven states, the fact that he himself is rooted in Dutch culture shows unmistakably in his pictures, but at the same time he also has a preference for American cinema, to which he adds that SOLDAAT VAN ORANJE is very American in its framing and in its editing. This is implicitly proven by the rumour that Steven Spielberg was very enthusiastic about this picture.

So, if the concept of Dutch cinema is restrictive according to Weisz and if, as Verhoeven claims, Dutch influences are only one among many others, then only the third position, hesitantly mentioned by Alex van Warmerdam, presumes that there indeed may reside something ‘typically Dutch’ in films. In order to articulate a "Dutch" accent, Van Warmerdam tentatively points at a distinction with his own canonical film DE NOORDERLINGEN [THE NORTH- ERNERS] (1992) and the work of Federico Fellini. Whereas Fellini's cinema is marked by a certain Catholicism in an exuberant and baroque way, the Christianity of DE NOORDERLINGEN is rather Calvinist, meaning very sober and puritan. This does not only show itself in the plot of the film about a woman who is worshipped as a saint, but also in the mise-en-scène of the film: the square windows look straight on to the pavement and the scenery is framed and delineated, as if to emphasize a suffocating atmosphere. As a consequence, Van Warmerdam says, his film is miserly, the opposite of baroque, and ‘may be that is what is so Dutch about it.’

Although Van Warmerdam describes his film as steeped in a puritan Christian tradition, DE NOORDERLINGEN is at the same time in polar opposite to Calvinism. It is a characteristic of Calvinism to distrust visual culture, because in the eyes of Calvinists images can never be reduced to only a single meaning. Whereas the deadly serious Calvinists adhere to a strong textual unilaterality (‘X means this and nothing else"), the wilfully visual minimalism of Van Warmerdam's cinema lends itself to ambiguity.'^ This deadpan kind of cinema excels in consistently portraying introvert and often even taciturn male loners whom we never can truly fathom. Journalist Hans Beerekamp coined the term ‘Hollandse School’ [Dutch School] to characterize the many enigmatic outsiders in films from the 1980s, made by not only Van Warmerdam, but also Jos Stelling, Orlow Seunke, Danniel Danniel, and Joost Ranzijn. The work of the first three will be discussed at length in later chapters, so let me at this stage just refer to Ranzijn's 45-minute MAN IN DE WAR [MAN IN

TROUBLE] (1984) for a thumbnail sketch of its chief characteristics. Though it is a little known and underrated film, it can function as an exemplary case.

Its main protagonist is a guy who has difficulty expressing his emotions: the shy Henk works as a gardener in a public park and has to make sure the visitors leave in time. Its plot is fairly absurd: One day Henk is on the tram when a woman hands him a bag to hold for her while she buys a ticket. She does not return, and before long the sound of a erying baby can be heard coming from the bag. He goes to visit his parents, but while his mother wants to take care of the baby, his father is fiercely against it. In subsequent scenes, we see how Henk tries to get rid of his unexpected asset, but to no avail.*3 Father tells child protection about his son's situation and the baby is taken away from him by a policeman. Then, there is the twist: he starts stealing babies, not just one, but very many, often aided by his friend who is a boxer. We can only guess that he does so for the joy of raising them, together with his mother who by now has divorced her husband.'^ The humour is basically deadpan and slightly morbid. In the beginning of MAN IN DE WAR, preceding the tram scene, Henk is getting married. During the taking of the wedding picture, the photographer busily arranges the guests for the photograph. At the very moment when the chaos has been transformed into calm and the photo can be taken, the bride collapses and eventually dies. Moreover, the film works with ironic parallels. One of Henk's attempts to get rid of the baby is to put the boy next to another kid in an unguarded pram on the pavement, but a bunch of women starts chasing him as an irresponsible 'father' - an irresponsibility which seems further proven when he takes the baby to a boxing match. In alater scene Henk takes a baby from another unguarded pram, and once again people start chasing him, this time as a vile kidnapper.