De dijk is dicht

Summary

War drama about a young widower who returns to the village where he has lost his wife.

A young man has lost his wife during the bombing of West-Kapelle, during the battle of Walcheren Causeway in 1944. After the war he returns to the village only to be overwhelmed by memories of her. Gradually, with the help of the other villagers, he regains his equilibrium and willpower so he too can help build up the stricken land.

De dijk is dicht is the last in a series of feature films and dramatised documentaries about the Second World War, shot and released during the first years after the war. Then interest in the war as a film subject waned. As Rudi Meyer, who fled to the Netherlands from Germany before the war, said to Bert Haanstra in his thick German accent: ‘You know, Bert, people are ja fed up with the war!’ It wasn’t until the early 1960s that interest in the Netherlands during the Second World War was revived, mainly as a result of historian Lou de Jong’s popular tv series De bezetting (‘The occupation’). Films like Paul Rotha's De Overval (‘The assault’) and Paul Verhoeven's Soldaat van Oranje (‘Soldier of Orange’) drew large audiences.