De vijanden

Summary

The first film directed by the poet and novelist Hugo Claus, De vijanden was also the first Belgo-Dutch co-production since 1925.

Claus already had a number of film scripts to his name, including Dorp aan de rivier and Het mes, both directed by Fons Rademakers. Rademakers was also to take on one of the major roles in De vijanden, an anti-war film denouncing the absurdity of branding a whole people as an enemy. Here, the 'enemies' are an American GI who has been separated from his unit, a 19-year-old Belgian man who wants to avenge the death of his grandmother and a middle-aged German soldier taken prisoner by the two men. Amidst the chaos of the Von Rundstedt offensive, the trio wander through the snow-covered Ardennes, fleeing the enemy, yet despite their mutual mistrust never quite able to believe that they are themselves each other's enemy.

Despite the small budget of 4 million francs, with Belgian tanks also playing the parts of their American allies and German adversaries and an endless wait for snow to fall in the Ardennes, Claus' film was more than weIl received. The jubilant critics lauded it simultaneously as a superb B-movie, a film d'auteur and, at the most radical, the most commercial Flemish film since Whitey. Thanks in particular to the outstanding camerawork by Herman Wuyts, the film awakens precisely the sense of anguish and oppression which devours its protagonists. Yet its strongest point is the very atypical characters: the American is a leader who doubts the reasons behind his actions, the German is an older, essentially jovial man and only the Belgian is a real fanatic.

Information

original title
De vijanden
foreign release title
The Enemies
alternative title
Drie mannen in de oorlog, drie vijanden, drie mensen
Trois hommes en guerre, trois ennemis, trois etres humains
production year
1967
censorship date
01-10-1967
first screening
29-02-1968
country
Belgium, Netherlands
geographical names
category
Fiction
director
producer
production company
production company

Cast

Actor

Crew

Technical notations

runtime
92
original length
2575
censorship length
2575
sound
Sound
colour
Black and white
format
35mm

Resources

Centrale Commissie voor de Filmkeuring (Nationaal Archief; J1375)
Johan J. Vincent, Naslagwerk over de Vlaamse film: ('Het Leentje'), Brussel (1986), p. 242
Marianne Thys (ed.), Belgian Cinema - Le Cinéma Belge - De Belgische film, Gent-Amsterdam (1999), p. 436

more information

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