Humour and Irony in Dutch Post-War Fiction Film FRAMING FILM
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HUMOUR AND IRONY IN DUTCH POST-WAR FICTION FILM FRAMING FILM FRAMING FILM is a book series dedicated to theoretical and analytical studies in restoration, collection, archival, and exhibition practices in line with the existing archive of EYE Filmmuseum. With this series, Amsterdam University Press and EYE aim to support the academic research community, as well as practitioners in archive and restoration. SERIES EDITORS Giovanna Fossati, EYE Filmmuseum & University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Leo van Hee, EYE Filmmuseum Frank Kessler, Utrecht University, the Netherlands Patricia Pisters, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Dan Streible, New York University, United States Nanna Verhoeff, Utrecht University, the Netherlands EDITORIAL BOARD Richard Abel, University of Michigan, United States Jane Gaines, Columbia University, United States Tom Gunning, University of Chicago, United States Vinzenz Hediger, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany Martin Koerber, Deutsche Kinemathek, Germany Ann-Sophie Lehmann, University of Groningen, the Netherlands Charles Musser, Yale University, United States Julia Noordegraaf, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands William Uricchio, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States Linda Williams, University of California at Berkeley, United States PETER VERSTRATEN HUMOUR AND IRONY IN DUTCH POST-WAR FICTION FILM AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS This publication is made possible by grants from the Nederlands Filmfonds and the Netherlands Society of Cinematographers. Published by EYE Filmmuseum / Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: Borgman © Drafthouse Films. Design: Brandon Schaefer. Cover design and lay-out: Magenta Ontwerpers, Bussum Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 943 0 e-isbn 978 90 4852 837 0 doi 10.5117/9789089649430 nur 670 Creative Commons License CC BY NC ND (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0) P. Verstraten / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2016 Some rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, any part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise). Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations repro- duced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 9 | 5 INTRODUCTION 13 Overview of Studies on Dutch Cinema 15 Like Sharing a Secret Code 19 Three Theories of Humour: flodder in amerika! 25 From ‘Jokes’ to ‘Humour’ 35 1 LOW-CLASS COMEDIES 45 A Prostitute and a Chambermaid: wat zien ik?! 48 (No) Ordinary People: hoge hakken, echte liefde and schatjes! 52 Be Thyself (or Act Like a Person): flodder 58 Carnivalesque 63 Forrest Gone Berserk: new kids turbo 66 Social ‘Ragging’ 72 Over-the-top: vet hard, moordwijven, filmpje! 75 Long Live ‘Sjakie’ 79 2 MULTICULTURAL COMEDIES 83 The Joie de Vivre of the Right-wing: vox populi 85 Strategic Ambiguity: alleen maar nette mensen 87 100% Halal: het schnitzelparadijs 92 Primal Dutch: shouf shouf habibi! 95 A Dutch Road Movie: dunya & desie 101 Kebab Sutra: rabat 106 Flouting Moral Rules 108 3 FROM ‘KIND-HEARTED’ COMEDIES TO NEUROTIC ROMANCES 113 Feel-good Tragedies: komedie om geld and ciske de rat 115 Playful Parallel Editing: fanfare 120 Bergman ‘Light’: dorp aan de rivier and makkers staakt uw wild geraas 123 Sticks of Satay in the Theater: een zwoele zomeravond and tussenstand 128 Pursuits of Happiness: alles is liefde and alles is familie 132 Free-floating Irony: de gelukkige huisvrouw and gooische vrouwen 138 Post-Feminism: phileine zegt sorry 143 Women Who Know Too Much 144 Epilogue: A Note on Tolerance 146 6 | 4 DELIBERATE CAMP 151 A Faggot’s Fairy Tale: theo & theo en de ontmaskering van het tenenkaasimperium 153 Demy Revisited: de tranen van maria machita 162 Double Entendres: ja zuster, nee zuster 165 The Detour of Postmodern Irony: floris 167 Gay Pride: chez nous 170 The Risk of Mere Witticism 173 5 HUMOUR AS AN AFTERMATH EFFECT 177 A Discrepancy between Story and Number: blue movie 178 A Bohemian Display of Sex and Decay: turks fruit 182 Once Provocative, Now Obsolete: Pim & Wim Movies 187 Band of Outsiders: cha cha 191 Agent Provocateur: 06 and blind date 192 The Humour of Horror: sint 195 6 HOMOSOCIAL JOKES 201 Ironic Distance: spetters 203 Homosexual Panic as Baloney: all stars 210 Bonding between a Gay Yuppie and a He-Man: simon 214 Dead Man ‘Walking’ as a Comedy: de marathon 217 A Wannabe Tarantino Bromance: bros before hos 219 Poetic Homosociality: wilde mossels 226 HUMOUR AND IRONY IN DUTCH POST-WAR FICTION FILM 7 FROM LUDIC HUMOUR TO COSMIC IRONY 229 A Stilled Form of Catholic Slapstick: de illusionist and de wisselwachter 230 A Buster Keaton Lookalike on and off the Set: oh boy! 236 The Brother with a Movie Camera: zusje 240 Play with Ontological Levels: het echte leven and Mockumentaries 242 Baudelaire’s Ironic Doubling: rent a friend 246 A Metafictional Joke Played On a Serious Man: ober 250 A Rom-com with Peter Pan: aanmodderfakker 254 8 FROM INSUBORDINATE PLAYFULNESS TO SUBVERSIVE IRONY 261 Ludic Paranoia: de minder gelukkige terugkeer van joszef katús naar het land van rembrandt 262 A Tongue-in-Cheek Short: body and soul 265 Anti-Bourgeois Satire: de verloedering van de swieps 268 | 7 Buñuelian Desires: de noorderlingen 270 Pervaded with Role-Playing: kleine teun and de laatste dagen van emma blank 274 Middle-of-the-Road Absurdism: de jurk and grimm 280 A Black Horror-Pastiche: borgman 284 Deadpan Irony 288 9 FROM GROTESQUE CARICATURE TO GROTESQUE SATIRE 293 The Grotesque as a Concept 295 A Wannabe Tarantino Caper Movie: black out 296 (Not) a Tarantino Dance Movie: naar de klote! 300 Comic Strip Meets Tarantino and Tarkovsky: de wederopstanding van een klootzak 302 Irony of Fate: plan c 305 Metafilm as a Vengeful Satire: de mantel der liefde 311 Fantastic Irony: de vierde man 317 Almost Full Circle 324 CONCLUSION 327 Notes 333 Bibliography 367 Filmography 377 Photo Credits 389 Index of Concepts 393 Index of Titles 397 Index of Names 405 PREFACE If the ‘comedian is the anthropologist of our humdrum everyday lives,’ as | 9 Simon Critchley remarks in his On Humour (66), then it would make sense to take this study on humour and irony in Dutch fiction film as an (oblique) ‘mir- ror of Holland.’ Let me say right here that I would not discourage readers to consider this study as a ‘metaphoric barometer’ of certain Dutch mentalities, but do not succumb to that temptation too easily. For humorous remarks and comic scenes can have ‘local and historical’ dimensions, indeed, but they can also be (relatively) ‘universal and timeless’ as well, and the boundaries are very difficult to draw. Moreover, any crystal clear claim would perhaps meet the obvious objection that humour is not just a cultural phenomenon, but also a matter of personal taste. Suppose that I were to argue that the people in the vicinity of Maaskantje are more likely to appreciate the crude jokes of the ‘New Kids’ from Maaskantje than people from Amsterdam, then of course anyone would be right to protest ‘I am from Maaskantje myself, and I do not like them at all’ or ‘I am from Amsterdam, and I think them very funny.’ Thus, if I had set myself the task of pinpointing to what extent humour and irony can be called ‘typical’ for a specific region or exemplary of a particular decade, I would have moved onto very shaky ground. My main reason for taking up this project was more modest. First, as I will explain in the Introduction, the subject of Dutch fiction cinema has been blatantly underrepresented in the academy so far, and this neglect becomes all the more unfair with the increase in popularity of Dutch films at the box office in recent years. Second, it struck me that a healthy – unhealthy to others, perhaps – dose of humour and irony seems to be a key ingredient of the most noteworthy titles in the history of Dutch fiction cinema, from the phenomenal commercial successes of Ciske de Rat and Fanfare in the 1950s to more recent winners of the Golden Calf for Best Film, such as the deadpan horror- pastiche Borgman and the happy slacker rom-com Aanmodderfakker. Combining these two facts, it felt as if the subject of this book was handed to me on a plate. Moreover, in response to academic tendencies since the mid- 1990s that have convincingly proposed the methods of ‘cultural analysis’ over strict cultural-historical approaches, I decided to include what Mieke Bal has called ‘rigorously, perhaps provocatively contemporary readings’ of the films (129). I did not want to restrict myself to discuss film X as merely a product of a particular era, since I can neither know nor fully understand what it is to watch a film from the 1960s with eyes of a ‘hippie.’ Viewing habits have changed considerably – and the films in chapter 5 clearly give proof of this – and therefore I chose to favour a certain deliberate anachronism. Cinephiles with a preference for cult are much aware of this mechanism in the practice of their spectatorship: in retrospect, a once-derided picture does not seem that bad at all, and it thus deserves re-appreciation as a curious but wonderful 10 |10 | case or as an underestimated forerunner of later developments. I am much more interested in detecting affinities between films on the basis of the forms of humour they share than in sticking to chronological accounts or in recon- structions of historical contexts, which both have been quite common in jour- nalistic books on Dutch cinema.