Paul Verhoeven's WW2 Film Trilogy: Voorbij, Voorbij, Soldier of Orange & Black Book

[00:00:00] This podcast is a production of Unfiltered Studios. If you would like to know more about joining Unfiltered Studios, please visit our website at unfpod.com for more information. Paul Verhoeven holds kind of a special place in my movie watching heart just because I remember seeing RoboCop on VHS when I was probably I don't know nine or 10 or so and I saw Starship Troopers in theaters when I think I was 11.

[00:00:27] Paul Verhoeven and both of those are very violent and interesting when you're a kid and you think they're 100% serious and then you see them again, you know, a decade later and you're like, oh, there was a whole bunch of humor and kind of making fun of things that you understand more when you're an adult and it's watching it again a second time that you're like this is so much different than I thought it was.

[00:00:50] Paul Verhoeven and that's fun. I think I like RoboCop more but Starship Troopers, it was very laid on thick in terms of stuff where as an adult watching being like, oh yeah, this is a this is much different than what I thought seeing this in theaters as an 11 year old where I just thought it was a movie about people that shot bugs. Turns out there's a lot of other stuff at hand here too. I'm glad you guys brought up Verhoeven.

[00:01:10] Flesh and Blood is a perfect movie just that he did with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rutger Hauer just showing how all these shenanigans, all these bastards get away with everything because it's the medieval ages. And he's had so many other good war movies that just show, you know, I mean, what he was doing with Starship Troopers is fascism and how it destroys everything and touches.

[00:01:34] And a lot of people like to just get shocked, shocked, shocked by all the sex and violence he puts in his movies. It's like, well, tell me you're just not paying attention to the movie. Like, that's not. Hell Divers 2 is a very popular video game, even at the time we're recording this. And that has been a big part of the discourse is people misunderstanding his sort of jingoistic patriotism in that film as like making fun of Heinlein's original. Yeah, yeah.

[00:02:03] But he refuses again to say that that's what he was doing. That's the other thing too. And so that goes back to even as far back as Apocalypse Now where Coppola's like, I'm not making a political movie. I'm like, well, you're talking about Vietnam. So you don't want that label, but guess what? Look at all the deleted scenes. This is not based on Heart of Darkness. Wait, he's going down a river. That guy's in a river. Who are you bullshitting, Francis? Who are you bullshitting?

[00:02:28] I mean, there's even a deleted scene with Marlon Brando's Kurtz character saying, your friends in Washington sent you. I'm like, yeah. So tell me that. It's like they know it is, but they don't want to be labeled or have it affect their business. And it's like, well, guess what? Also, yeah, there's part of that. But I mean, Ken, you were on our, when we last got together, we were talking about Spielberg. I made the quick joke that it was like, Jaws is a political movie, but it is because the whole point is. The senator opens up the beach.

[00:02:57] It's like, no, we have to keep going, right? It's an RFP. Don't worry about the vaccines. There you go. Yeah. It's like. What the? Paul Verhoeven. I totally recommend his Dutch movies. You would love them. You'd be like, wow. Yeah, I know. I love him so much. He's I wish he would come back and do American movies again, but I know he won't. And I respect it. Like, I get it.

[00:03:25] If I ever had any juice, I would give him all the money just to be like, do whatever you want, man. Make it. Make an awesome satirical action movie again. Please do. No notes. Do your fucking thing, bro. You'd like his last two movies. He did. He did one about a video game developer, L, and then he did Benedetta, which was about a possessed non. Yeah, lesbian nuns. Oh, it's more to it than that. Trust me. I know. But that's like, that's whatever. You know, like, it's just perfect. That's perfect for Verhoeven because he's a bit of a perv, too.

[00:03:55] Well, he's a perv, but like, he just loves making fun of sex. And everyone's just like, always has the classifier. Well, he might not even be that much of a perv. It's just American sensibilities are so like. Like, like, he's more of a Cronenberg type. You know, he's just. Yeah. We're just also uptight when it comes to sex. Like, oh, he can't show anything. And it's just like he hates. He's a he's he's Dutch. Like he's Euro. And he is different. I don't care that much.

[00:04:24] But the ratings board is also just awful. Like just having to argue with him. This is like us. Like, so the MPA is is insane. It's like you can say one fuck, but you can't say two. And like, what are we doing? And so I always think like, like if aliens came down and like just watched what we were doing, they'd be like, why? Why? Yeah. Be like, like what? You're putting these rules in place to stop you from like, what are you doing?

[00:04:53] Like, it would be insane from someone just like coming in cold from another society or another race of of beings. They'd just be like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, why is this happening? This is nonsense. Like you're wasting all this time and effort for what? It's just amazing. It's like one more scene isn't going to make much difference. But this scene is right. And then you hear stories about filmmakers.

[00:05:17] They're like, we put something in like grossly over the top because they knew they would stop that, but then when they did the thing they actually wanted to do, then it would be fine because it was lesser. So they're like, okay, that's fine. But if they would have come at it with that originally, they would have said no. Again, it's just, what are we doing? If I didn't come up with it, it wasn't my thing. It's like, we all think we're going to live forever. So we can just like die in the minutia of nothing. It's so frustrating. Minutia of nothing. That should be a slogan.

[00:05:48] The most important of everything, you know, everything is dominated by these two.

[00:06:42] All the world, whatever, whatever happens is dominated by sex and violence. We're going to go back further in time first to 1973. And I thought it's still quite early on Sunday. We want to ease you in gently. So we're going to show the opening three minutes of Turkish delight. That opening, with the exception of the badly translated lines,

[00:07:08] is pretty faithful to the opening line of Jan Volker's novel, upon which the film is adapted. I'm just curious, by the film's staggering success, do you think at that moment in 1973, this was something that people were just waiting for? Yes. I think there was what you would call probably a certain sexual revolution in Holland. much more, let's say, being open-minded towards sex.

[00:07:35] And, of course, the writer of the book, Jan Volkers, was one of the persons that introduced an extremely realistic and direct way of writing a novel. I mean, the realities that he describes in his book, based on his own life, mostly, he takes these elements from memory. It's all things that happened. And he put them in a certain order, and at the end, the girl dies.

[00:08:05] But it is really one of the two writers, Jan Volkers is one of the two Dutch writers at that time that led in this revolution, I think, by their directness, by the way they described, let's say, sex. The other writer is Gerard Reve, but he was, let's say,

[00:08:34] introducing being gay to the Dutch people. And I did not really take any cues from other movies. The style, of course, is certainly different than Bertolucci. And I felt that it was something that was possible to describe something so directly and so realistically in Dutch society that people were aware that these things were happening.

[00:09:02] In fact, we're all talking about how to describe reality and how far to go. There's a quote by René Sutendek where she says, most women in Paul's films will not rest until they've got what they want. They usually win, and they let no one stand in their way. Could you talk about your attraction to these really strong female characters, but also the way that in the film we see them so often through a male gaze, but it feels like the women are actually controlling the scene and the way things unfold?

[00:09:33] Well, perhaps that has been lately the case with the two movies I did, which is Elle and Black Book. But, of course, there are many other movies, basically, where the males are dominant, you know. So it's not that I only do female strong women, basically. I do also interesting strong male characters. But if somebody gives me a script about the strong woman,

[00:10:00] then in general I would be attracted to that. Yeah. Let's actually talk while we're here about Hollywood and your move to Hollywood. And how easy was the move? Yeah, I got lucky. I mean, I got in the hands of a very good producer, John Davidson. One of the two script writers was always with me on the set. They prevented me to make terrible mistakes against American culture, because I didn't know that very well. But it was...

[00:10:29] I was realizing that I didn't know the actors, that I didn't know the country, I didn't know the locations, I didn't know the crew. It was like a very successful transformation of myself. I mean, it worked, you know. I mean, it could have perhaps been... Many European directors, of course, have tried to make movies in the United States, and some of them worked.

[00:10:56] But I think because I accepted that I had to go with the flow. The flow really is what they want anyhow. I mean, then still in that perspective, you can still give it your own spin. That's what I did with Robocop. Certainly, I made it mine, and I used my interest in comic books when I was young. I used that to overlay it, and let's say pushing the irony or satirical elements of the movie.

[00:11:25] And I had the feeling that by surrounding myself with American people in Robocop, I became kind of American. Interesting enough, the movie I made before that, which is Flesh and Blood, that was basically a medieval story. Rutger Howe was the main character. And we did that. That was the first movie I did in English. And I didn't want to go to the United States. I mean, so I made Flesh and Blood for Orion,

[00:11:54] basically the company that later did Robocop. And that was, let's say, a failure. I was trying. I didn't want to become really American. I made, let's say, a half step and not a full step. I tried to think, okay, I use American movie, but I'll stay in Europe. And that did not work, because I was surrounded by Europeans.

[00:12:22] There were a couple of American actors. Jennifer Jason Leigh was in that movie, the female protagonist. But I think the fact that I was surrounded by Spanish people, Dutch people, some English people, German people. And I, yeah, it failed really, because I was not aware of American thinking.

[00:12:52] And basically, in Robocop, I came into, really, I stepped into the unknown waters of the United States. Welcome all, welcome all. We're doing another tribute to Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven and his earlier work. The stuff that was on critics' radar, as well as some obscurities, and how that all complements his later Hollywood material, as well as when he returns to the Netherlands.

[00:13:22] To continually come out with just art house masterpieces that more people should have seen. They've had reasonable audiences, and they've had many actors who become better known, but he just knows how to just find these bizarre movies that shouldn't work on paper, and he gives them life. And when left alone from Hollywood producers, not too much gets lost in between all the mayhem.

[00:13:52] So, it's going to be lots of acclaim. So, tonight, we're talking about his World War II film collection. That's right. You know, he's had his share of war movies, and all kinds of other material. But, yeah, just all these films that are set at wartime, or just wartime dramas, or thrillers. I just figured, hey, we got to give these an absolute just retrospect with the best of the best.

[00:14:21] So, he first ventured into it with Soldier of Orange, which, much like Das Boot, it was edited as an international miniseries, so that got some exposure. I'd heard about it for years, because it was also a romantic drama, and a war filler, and it starred future A-listers Rutger Tower. Yep, this is what some of the many movies he was in with Verhoeven, as well as that American producers saw,

[00:14:51] and that he later transferred over to the States to star in hit movies, and shows like The Hitcher, and Blade Runner, and Gallivant, among many other things. It also features Jerome Crabb, who, again, many will know from The Fugitive, James Bond film, Living Daylight. You know, he goes on to reunite with Verhoeven on the fourth end, which I've covered in another episode, but, like others, this was one I saw much after the fact, after seeing him be a bad guy in Hollywood movies for years. You know, he just,

[00:15:20] has that just face of, I Am Hiding Something, the kind of just, hey, you know, just look at me, kind of look, and he's gone on to being under movies like Jumpin' Jack Flash, Guest Star on Miami Vice, the British film Scandal, Soderbergh film King of the Hill, the TV movie Stalin, with Robert Duvall. It goes on and on and on. Even Ocean's 12, Ideal Husband, Ever After.

[00:15:50] Man, he's been in more than I even realized he's been, but whenever he's in a movie, I just, I geek out. I know I'm in for a treat. He's hardly what I would call a B-movie actor, but he really is just magnificent. And for this being one of his first movies, you know, I gotta hand it to him. Like, he acts the hell out of this part. So, the scenario, for those who don't know, it's basically about

[00:16:20] these students who are recruited to join the Dutch resistance during World War II. And, yeah, I just, if anything, much like, Verhoeven always has loss of identity kind of themes in his movies, movies, and he shows how young these guys are. Again, they're dealing with everything on their mind. And after a while, like any spy,

[00:16:50] it questions what their true loyalty is. And they do it in a non-so-preachy way. And just be warned, if you're not into subtitle movies, don't even bother. But shame on you. You're missing out on something that just really stands out because it just really is very well put together. There's not too much music,

[00:17:20] but there's a lot of solid build-up. It won the Golden Globe Award nom for Best Foreign Language Film. There was apparently even a stage musical of it made in 2010. And 91% of critics dug it. But I would say also just throughout the dialogue, like if you're already familiar with Verhoeven's other dialogue that he uses in his more violent and sexual material like Robocop, Basic Instinct, and Total Recall,

[00:17:50] you're going to be right at home here. Just the aristocracy and everyone having a different role in the film as well as another character who lives in exile in London. And it's just commentating on much like an actual college would be where not everybody is on the same page

[00:18:19] and they all politically disagree even though they're all on the same team. It's based on a book by Eric Hazzelhoff Razimo. He became a resistance fighter and RAF pilot during Second World War. So, yeah. Interesting. But, and you can see this in the plot synopsis,

[00:18:49] but I like how just the character it's based off his experiences, but like the author's experiences, but I like how Eric and company are just carefree. But then when the Germans invade in early 1940 of May, you know, they no longer take friendship and love for granted. They have to make choices, but it's just so meticulous that just building up suspense and even the quieter moments and as they're training, as they're swimming, as they're spying,

[00:19:18] it's just showing how they don't have time to adjust before being thrown into danger. Much like how you see a bit of this with Verhoeven with how he showed how everyone is clueless as to what pawns they're becoming in their intergalactic war in Starship Troopers, how they don't realize that they're essentially a Nazi force for evil. That's how clueless and blinded they are by patriotism. This does more, instead of the brainwashing aspect, more just

[00:19:48] how they're having to be hardened. Again, they didn't choose to grow up. Growing up chose them. Adulthood chose them to say it better. better. I love how they show some of the different guys' fiancés, interaction with the British, Edward Fox, who you'll know from Day of the Jackal, Battle of Britain,

[00:20:18] Bridge Too Far, several different war movies is here as a British officer who runs the missions for these Netherlands resistance fighters. He's trying to help them undertake the occupied part of the Netherlands. You even see a half German student who was drafted into the Dutch army before joining

[00:20:47] the Panzer division of the German SS. So, after the Germans went. You see some of that just we can't be friends anymore. It's getting complicated. You're now fighting for the enemy. There's a bit of that. I like how they also show that one of the Jewish students is also a boxer. It's just all these different voices,

[00:21:17] but showing how he's attracted to the queen of the Netherlands and everything. There's all kinds of subplots going, but it's organized. It's not too much to handle. This is the good kind of Verhoeven. This is not showgirls level Verhoeven where you're just like too many cooks. No, none of that shit. It's good. Please check it out. I don't know if you can find the miniseries anywhere. You probably could at some point or another on VHS

[00:21:47] back in the day, but you can find it on archive. You can find it on some other channels. Please check it out. And then he followed it up with a 1981 movie called All Things Pass, or as it was said in Dutch, Verbiets, Verbiets. I'm probably bastardizing it, but it translates virtually as Gone Gone. I did not have any luck

[00:22:16] at finding anything anywhere. I could not find it on DVD, even at Region 2, nothing. And apparently it was aired on Catholic Radio Broadcasting, KRO, with a K. It's a Dutch public broadcasting channel. And apparently, yeah, part of Netherlands TV, so they aired it

[00:22:46] in 1981, even though the film was shot in 79. So shortly after Soldier of Orange, Rehobunut releases this, didn't notice any big names or semi-known faces. It was apparently by the same screenwriter he worked on with Spetters, who is better known for also working on him on another movie we'll get to, Black Book, but he's also worked on the 1986 film The Assault, which was a big

[00:23:16] award winner back in 86 that unfortunately is also not available in the States. But yeah, I didn't mind this. This was very easy going. You know, Rehobun had done his share of military kind of documentaries and everything, and this is about Dutch resistant fighters who 35 years after World War II have sworn revenge on a Dutch SS officer who shot their friend during the Netherlands resistance to Nazi occupation. Upon finding the man,

[00:23:46] they discovered that he's now paralyzed and would suffer more to stay alive than to be awake. So yeah, it wasn't too morbid, it wasn't too gritty, but it was a lot of stock footage mixed in with close-ups and intensity and exposition, and I didn't mind it. It went by pretty fast. It's only an hour. The, I found my copy on YouTube. I don't know if it's still there, but the

[00:24:17] subtitles were auto-generated, so I made out my best to follow along the story, but it was pretty easy going. It was not as complex, but if you're a Verhoeven completist, then you should do your best to track this down and really just be taken aback by it. It really is pretty good. So then that leaves us with the final part of his unofficial World War II

[00:24:46] themed trilogy, and that is Black Book, and this introduced me to Clarice Von Hooden. Many will know her now for, again, Game of Thrones, Suzy Q, I had seen her in The Western Brimstone, I didn't know she was in Repo Man or Black Butterflies, but I had seen those. Valkyrie, she got a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. Again, I had seen her in it, but didn't realize that was her. I mainly knew her from this and the action medieval horror film

[00:25:16] Black Death with Sean Bean, where she played a witch. She's from the Netherlands. She's just magnificent. This is her career top 10 best role for her. It's definitely one of the better, more seen movies, as well as foreign movies that have come out in recent years. Many other Verhoeven fans have never seen it, and that is just criminal. This also introduced me

[00:25:46] to Sebastian Bach, who you guys will know from the lives of others, Bridge of Spies, season 5 of Homeland, even the fifth infamous Die Hard movie. Once again, we're back in the depths. This apparently even got adapted into a book, which showed more backstory, but we're back to having Rachel Stein, who's inspired by a real life person, again, adopts an

[00:26:15] alias and decides to become a Netherlands resistance fighter. She's a former Dutch Jewish singer, and again, you know, when the farmhouse she's hiding at gets destroyed by an allied bomber, she goes to see a lawyer who has been helping her family. He arranges for her to escape to the liberated southern part of the country, aided by a man,

[00:26:44] Van Gein, another character actor you guys might have seen. Yeah, he's another well-known stage and voice actor, but enough about that. Van Gein, you know, helps her and she gets reunited with her family and boards a boat and has to take them and other refugees to the south. Unfortunately, they get ambushed by the German SS who kill them and rob valuables from their bodies. She is the only survivor, but is unable to escape.

[00:27:14] Using a non-Jewish alias, she becomes involved with a resistance group in the Hague under the leadership of Gerben, culters, and works closely with a doctor. And she works closely with the cell. And Verhoeven did a good job just showing how, again, you know, there's nothing glamorous about this. Everybody's an anti-hero at some point doing some thievery, having to get their

[00:27:45] sexual sexual and they show how these Germans are lusting after her, unaware that she is also a Jewish woman. And it also brings up other themes. What is your real loyalty? As well as the German abandonment law that was passed to soldiers which resulted in a firing squad. It's just interesting how our heroine gets tortured by the violent anti-Nazi volunteer jailers, rescued by Aukersman, who's now a colonel in the

[00:28:15] Dutch Army. It's just all kinds of utter twists and it's a happy ending. It's more than what you would let on on the surface, but a must-see for any foreign film fan, any awards-bait person. This was well-earned. Verhoeven is already on the record as he wanted to make as great a movie as he could. Not very Hollywood-like, but in no way does he at all glamorize any of the Germans. He's just

[00:28:44] showing that some of them are other than Sebastian Cox character who is reluctant to carry out some of the orders, but we're not seeing much of the camps as we are, just all the different resistance groups. We even see a communist who's a member of the resistance group, a sailor who helps out Rachel. We even see a policeman who betrays those trying to leave occupied territories so there you go. You've got some police corruption.

[00:29:14] It's just rare that we see in 1944 occupied Holland and how wild how Rachel's also hiding with a Christian family. There's some themes there, you know, and just all kinds of forcing people to do things that, again, they're not right but necessary for survival. And there's some allusions to how, again, wars still continue after they end. You know, there's all

[00:29:44] violence in other countries. I don't feel like that lands as well but it's a nice try. Rehoboam is way more mature here versus, again, you know, it just was a good, the reason this movie, I think, worked was it was just showing he still had some aspect of, he never lost his talent but he still had it, so to speak. Because,

[00:30:14] if anything, Hollywood had brought the worst, you know, out of him. You know, by the time he made Hollow Man, he was done and we didn't know if he would make anything again. There was rumors he'd do another Robocop sequel but that was bullshit. He was never returning to Hollywood. Still hasn't. Likely never will. I see some people just saying, oh, it's a melodrama. I'm gonna heavily, 5,000% off the charts disagree. This is earned. Because again,

[00:30:44] you know he's not playing it safe but he's also joking around, he's not getting too cute, he's not stating the obvious. Verhoeven earns his keep with these free thrillers. Please, everybody, war genre guys, arthouse, completists, Verhoeven fans, any kind of fan base that you fall into, you will not be disappointed. So, make it so. Check these out ASAP. We'll return after these messages.

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[00:32:46] We got a new show every week and almost always am I the winner. Not true, Ray. In the past, we've discussed such matches as Captain America versus Darth Vader, Solid Snake versus the Iron Giant, classic matchups like RoboCop versus Terminator, and even the Muppets versus Sesame Street. That one was crazy. So if you're a fan of geek culture and love a spirited debate, check out the Who Would Win Show wherever you get your podcasts or check us out at whowouldwinshow.com.

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