Black Book

To be shown: 14 January 2008

Ger/Neth/UK/Belg 2006.
Director: Paul Verhoeven.
Starring: Carice Van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman, Halina Reijin.
Certificate 15. 145 mins.

Synopsis

Paul Verhoeven's epic World War II drama about a young Jewish woman who joins the resistance in the Hague and gets entangled in a deadly web of double dealing and betrayal.
This stunning sexy thriller from the internationally acclaimed director of Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers and Total Recall, with a star making debut from Carice van Houten. The film also marks Verhoeven's return to the Netherlands after 23 years.
In our earliest glimpse of Rachel, the Jewish heroine of Black Book, she is being called for breakfast. 'If the Jews had listened to Jesus' grumbles the father of the Dutch family sheltering her, 'they wouldn’t be in such a mess now'.
It is September 1944.
Rachel drizzles a crucifix of jam into her porridge, smiles ingratiatingly and vigorously stirs.
In short Verhoeven’s pictures thrive on irony and the superb, gripping Black Book is a double faced affair. His first Dutch production in two decades uses Rachels experiences to hold a glass to the little examined period of Dutch history around the end of World War II.
With her family lost, the former singer falls in with a resistance cell, is given a new identity and infiltrates the local SS HQ via a liaison with senior officer Ludwig Muntze.
As the nazis crumble and rachel begins to glean the contents of the titular logbook, she realises she may have less to fear from the disarmingly decent Muntze than the heroes of the underground or vengeful public.
Black Book charts the progress of a woman set on survival and independance and willing to use sex. Rachel is more sympathetic but just as canny and she takes to her role playing with aplomb.
Van Houten's barnstorming performance, accentuated by a bold saturated palette , makes comparisons to Garbo and Jean Harlow plausible, but Rachel is far from the only charcter well versed in the uses of glamour.
A noble visage or political assumption might distort as much as a small black book reveals. Best not judge by covers.

Notes

Director Paul Verhoeven and screen writer Gerard Soeteman got the idea for the movie while doing research for Soldaat Van Oranje (Soldier of Orange 1977). Instead of simply working the controversies surrounding the Dutch resistance into the already top- heavy screenplay of Soldaat Van Oranje, they decided to make a separate movie out of it. Verhoeven and Soeteman wrote the screenplay over a period of 20 years and finally solved many script problems by making the main character a woman.

The movie was almost cancelled in 2004 when many of the foreign companies that had promised to fund the movie had not yet paid up.
Production was abruptly green-lit again in the autumn of 2005 when the 16 million euro budget was finally secured. This allowed the production team only a couple of months of principal photography.

With a budget of approx 16 million euros this is the most expensive dutch movie to date.

This film was the official Netherlands entry for the best foreign language film category at the 79th academy awards. It was on the short list of nine films competing for a nomination, but it did not make it to the final 5 announced on the 23rd of January 2007.

It was awarded a BAFTA nomination for best foreign film and the London Critics Circle film awards for foreign language film of the year.

When principal photography took longer than anticipated, Carice van Houten had to return to the production while she was already scheduled to appear in a stage play. The theatre company successfully sued Zwartboeks production company for the delay of several months that was caused by Van Houten’s absence.