Paul Verhoeven and Rutger Hauer first joined forces when making 'Floris', a Dutch TV series for kids inspired by ITV's 'Ivanhoe', in the late 1960s. While not remotely as well made as its British forerunner - a recent documentary shows that it was very much learning by doing - the episodes you can now watch on YouTube are quite amusing, given the right age and nationality.
'Soldaat van Oranje' (Soldier of Orange) is based on the eponymous memoirs of Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, who received the highest Dutch military decoration for his actions during WW II. The book is a ripping yarn, as promised by the title - Hauer, the lead in the film, has called it a 'boys' book'. The fact that it has been turned into a musical as well is another indication that it does not delve deeply into the grim history of the Netherlands during the war.
The film does a fairly good job in touching on many aspects of the occupation of the Netherlands, such as the range of attitudes to the Nazi occupation that existed, from resistance via keeping your head down to joining the SS. The Englandspiel , a deadly 'game' played by the Germans with captured Dutch secret agents sent over by the British Special Operations Executive, inspires much of the story. And judging by what we know about her from newsreels, etc., the exiled Queen Wilhelmina (of Orange-Nassau, formally the soldiers' commander-in-chief) with her odd mannerisms is convincingly played by Andrea Domburg.
However, those who are unfamiliar with Dutch history of these years will not get all the references; and as the tone of the whole film is Ivanhoe-ish, you wonder why so much effort was put into reconstructing reality. There are also scenes that take outright liberties with wartime reality for thrills, though they can be funny. My favourite is the mild bit of sexploitation in the scenes where a girl shows herself in full-length Eve's costume behind open windows in, respectively, Leiden and London (in both cases she stands on a bed placed, very conveniently, right under the window). There is a nice parallel: in Leiden a clearly amused Nazi collaborator looks up; in London the normally very puritanical Queen tries hard not be somewhat amused.
The film's merits are in my opinion greater than that of Verhoeven's much later Black Book. But ripping yarns lose some of their appeal when you know something about the horrors of war (for that reason one of the book's real-life characters actually stayed away from the Hollywood-style gala opening performance of the film in Amsterdam).
I keep wondering whether the starting point of the film could not also have been a starting point for a war film that digs deeper. The type of student fraternity initiation rite shown in the film was common until the 1960s, and this species of adolescent sadism has never gone away completely. Maybe because it does lead to bonding (as I know from experience); but you might be excused for seeing uncomfortable parallels between the pandemonium and the shaven heads of the new students and what happened in Nazi camps: an Amsterdam student fraternity actually had 'Dachautje spelen' ('playing little Dachau') on its initiation programme, during which people are known to have fainted. Later in the film Dutch WA-men (uniformed Nazis) dump a Jewish peddler's handcart in a canal. Is there no link between their playful sadism and 'Dachautje spelen'? Camps similar to Dachau were the peddler's destination. Why do people take things out on those who are weaker, where does the contempt for other human beings come from (which resulted in the murder of over 100,000 Dutch Jews)? But a film exploring those questions might not be a box office success.
'Soldaat van Oranje' (Soldier of Orange) is based on the eponymous memoirs of Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, who received the highest Dutch military decoration for his actions during WW II. The book is a ripping yarn, as promised by the title - Hauer, the lead in the film, has called it a 'boys' book'. The fact that it has been turned into a musical as well is another indication that it does not delve deeply into the grim history of the Netherlands during the war.
The film does a fairly good job in touching on many aspects of the occupation of the Netherlands, such as the range of attitudes to the Nazi occupation that existed, from resistance via keeping your head down to joining the SS. The Englandspiel , a deadly 'game' played by the Germans with captured Dutch secret agents sent over by the British Special Operations Executive, inspires much of the story. And judging by what we know about her from newsreels, etc., the exiled Queen Wilhelmina (of Orange-Nassau, formally the soldiers' commander-in-chief) with her odd mannerisms is convincingly played by Andrea Domburg.
However, those who are unfamiliar with Dutch history of these years will not get all the references; and as the tone of the whole film is Ivanhoe-ish, you wonder why so much effort was put into reconstructing reality. There are also scenes that take outright liberties with wartime reality for thrills, though they can be funny. My favourite is the mild bit of sexploitation in the scenes where a girl shows herself in full-length Eve's costume behind open windows in, respectively, Leiden and London (in both cases she stands on a bed placed, very conveniently, right under the window). There is a nice parallel: in Leiden a clearly amused Nazi collaborator looks up; in London the normally very puritanical Queen tries hard not be somewhat amused.
The film's merits are in my opinion greater than that of Verhoeven's much later Black Book. But ripping yarns lose some of their appeal when you know something about the horrors of war (for that reason one of the book's real-life characters actually stayed away from the Hollywood-style gala opening performance of the film in Amsterdam).
I keep wondering whether the starting point of the film could not also have been a starting point for a war film that digs deeper. The type of student fraternity initiation rite shown in the film was common until the 1960s, and this species of adolescent sadism has never gone away completely. Maybe because it does lead to bonding (as I know from experience); but you might be excused for seeing uncomfortable parallels between the pandemonium and the shaven heads of the new students and what happened in Nazi camps: an Amsterdam student fraternity actually had 'Dachautje spelen' ('playing little Dachau') on its initiation programme, during which people are known to have fainted. Later in the film Dutch WA-men (uniformed Nazis) dump a Jewish peddler's handcart in a canal. Is there no link between their playful sadism and 'Dachautje spelen'? Camps similar to Dachau were the peddler's destination. Why do people take things out on those who are weaker, where does the contempt for other human beings come from (which resulted in the murder of over 100,000 Dutch Jews)? But a film exploring those questions might not be a box office success.