Good or Bad: WWII in Dutch Feature Films

Paul Rotha’s film De overval premiered on 21 December 1962. The film tells the story of several Frisian resistance fighters who liberate a number of prisoners from a prison in Leeuwarden without ever having fired a shot.

The film was based on a true story and the idea for it came from Lou de Jong. De Jong was a Dutch historian specialised in WWII. He was well known for both his fourteen-part book series about the Netherlands during the war as well as a television series entitled De bezetting. The television series, broadcast in 1960, reached a wide audience and stirred a renewed interest in the war. This gave Rudi Meyer a good reason to throw his lot in with De Jong and to give in to his wish to produce De overval.

In De overval, the roles are clear and conveniently arranged. Despite the atrocities of the war, and the spectrum between ‘bad’ and ‘good’, this film portrayed the characters as stereotypes: resistance fighters, collaborators, Germans – all were portrayed in clear-cut, clichéd ways.

No Certainties

This wasn’t the case in the next film about the war. Fons Rademakers’ Als twee druppels water brought another image perspective to the fore. In this film, the boundary between good and bad is no longer clear, nor is truth a fixed concept. In taking this angle, Rademakers was in line with themes found in Dutch literature at the time, in particular the works of writers such as Harry Mulisch, Gerard van het Reve and W.F. Hermans. Als twee druppels water was based on Hermans’ novel De donkere kamer van Damocles. These writers were part of the post-war generation – to which CoBrA artists such as Karel Appel also belonged – for whom the war had damaged their belief in humankind and left truth without an absolute value. Starting with Als twee druppels water, this theme would be vital to Dutch feature films about WWII or its aftermath. These films are chiefly based on novels in which questions of right or wrong or truth or untruth are continually posed anew. The next film with a war theme after Als twee druppels water was also based on a Hermans novel: Paranoia by Adriaan Ditvoorst. Famous Dutch authors like Simon Vestdijk and Harry Mulisch were to follow.

Thou Shalt Not Kill

Besides the perennial questions of right and wrong, antiheroism is also a theme found in Dutch war films. In particular, Wim Verstappen’s Pastorale 1943 – adapted from a novel by Simon Vestdijk – shows resistance fighters as normal, scared citizens who find themselves faced with a diabolic dilemma. Compelled to fight against their occupiers, Pastorale 1943 shows the awful reality of actually having to kill an enemy – unlike in De overval, where it never came down to having to kill anyone.

This contrasts starkly with the heroism seen in Paul Verhoeven’s war films, Soldaat van Oranje and Zwartboek, in which killing is simply taken for granted. It’s the nature of war, a condition in which the thin veneer of civilisation has long disappeared, opportunism reigns supreme, and heroism is equivalent to a contempt for death.

Verstappen’s resistance knows no heroes, just brave people. The motto of his film also happened to be ‘Van een volk dat een aardig volk is, omdat het geen helden kent’ (‘From a nation that is kind because it knows no heroes.’).

Related pages

WWII and the Resistance: From LO-LKP to De overval

After WWII, Dutch film was in a state of devastation – a Stunde Null. The studios in Duivendrecht and Wassenaar had been plundered and destroyed. Many people essential to the film industry and the cinema business had either been killed or had left the Netherlands to seek refuge elsewhere....