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Black Book Plot

Black Book (Dutch: Zwartboek) is a 2006 thriller war film by director Paul Verhoeven, starring Carice van Houten and Sebastian Koch. The story is about a young Jewish woman in the Netherlands, trying to survive at the end of World War II. The film had its world premiere on September 1, 2006 at the Venice Film Festival and its public release on September 14, 2006. At the time of its release, it was the most expensive Dutch film ever made.

The film tells the story of Rachel Steinn (Carice van Houten) at the end of the Second World War. She is a Jewish singer who used to live in Berlin before the war and who is now hiding from the Nazi regime in occupied Netherlands. She meets members of the Dutch resistance Gerben Kuipers (Derek de Lint) and Hans Akkermans (Thom Hoffman), and the German SD-officers Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch) and Günther Franken (Waldemar Kobus), and becomes friends with her Dutch colleague Ronnie (Halina Reijn).

In 1944, the young Jewish woman Rachel Steinn (Carice van Houten) tries, together with her family and other Jews, to flee the Nazi-occupied part of the Netherlands to the liberated southern part of the country, by boat. However, they are attacked by the Germans and she is the only survivor; she does not succeed in fleeing outside the occupied territory but is not caught. Later it turns out that such trips are arranged by Dutch traitors in cooperation with German officer Günther Franken (Waldemar Kobus), for the purpose of stealing the property of the refugees.

Rachel joins a resistance group, and under the alias Ellis de Vries manages to get friendly with the German SD officer Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch), and to bug the office. She gets a job in the SD office. She really falls in love with Müntze. He is not as bad for the Dutch as other German officers. For example, he refuses to obey the rule to kill 40 innocent Dutch citizens to revenge the killing by the resistance group of a Dutch traitor. For this Müntze is imprisoned and sentenced to death.

The resistance group plans to free a number of their imprisoned men. Rachel is only willing to participate if they free Müntze too. Reluctantly they agree. However, the attempt fails and many prisoners and rescuers are killed.

Rachel gets caught and imprisoned by the nazis. They have discovered the bug and use it make the resistance group listening to the transmitted sound believe she has worked for the Germans and has betrayed the resistance. In particular the resistance group suspects her to be responsible for the failure of the rescue operation.

The country is liberated, and Rachel is emprisoned as traitor. It turns out that physician Hans Akkermans, who supposedly was in the resistance movement, was actually involved in the devastatingly ending refugee trips, thus enriching himself. This man tries to kill Rachel with a large dose of insulin. She manages to survive by eating a lot of chocolate as an antidote.

Rachel's innocence is revealed, and together with a man from the resistance they smuggle the physician and the money and jewels he has stolen, together in a coffin, to a quiet place, where they seal the coffin and slowly kill him by suffocation.

A flashforward at the start of the film, continued at the end of the film, shows Rachel living in the fifties is Israel, with a husband and children.

She is visited by wartime friend and colleague at the SD office Ronnie (Halina Reijn), a woman who easily adapts to each situation by working for the Germans, having sex with them, accepting gifts from them stolen from Jews, and, after the war, just as easily, making friends with a Canadian liberator, whom she later marries.

Black Book is not a true story like Soldier of Orange, but according to the director the events are true. Like in the film, the German headquarters were in The Hague. In Black Book the family of Rachel Steinn tries to cross in the Biesbosch were these attempts actually took place. In 1944 many Jews were killed when they tried to 'cross' to the liberated parts of the southern Netherlands, often they were entrapped by Dutch policemen. The events in the story are also related to the life of Paul Verhoeven. Verhoeven is born in 1938 and he grew up in The Hague during the Second World War.

Verhoeven explains that the story is not showing an obvious moral contrast between characters:
"In this movie, everything has a shade of grey. There are no people who are completely good and no people who are completely bad. It's like life. It's not very Hollywoodian."

After twenty years of working in the United States, Paul Verhoeven returns to his fatherland the Netherlands for filming. He works together again with scenario writer Gerard Soeteman, with whom he made succesfull films such as Turkish Delight (1973) and Soldier of Orange (1977). Verhoeven and Soeteman have been working on the script for fifteen years, but they solved their problems with the story only in the early 2000s, by changing the main character from male to female. According to Verhoeven Black Book is born out of elements that did not fit in any of his earlier movies and it can be seen as a supplement to his earlier film about World War II Soldier of Orange.

The film encountered financial problems. According to producer Rob Houwer it wasn't possible to make the film for as much as the initially calculated €12,000,000. San Fu Maltha, producer of Black Book, first tried to economize by leaving out the scenes in Israel, but this was not negotiable for Paul Verhoeven. In 2004 the shooting was delayed because not enough promised money was received. When in August 2005 the shooting starts, there is a lot of media attention for the film in the Netherlands, because in the town Hardenberg a real pre-war farm was blown up. Furthermore in one of the liberation scenes in The Hague as many as 1100 or 1200 extras have a role. Already during the shooting the general public was able to see making of scenes on their mobile phones or on the internet.

Eventually, the total budget needed for the film is over €17,000,000, which makes Black Book the most expensive film made in the Netherlands, at the time of its release. The film is financed with money from Dutch subsidiary film funds and foreign investers.

HRH The Prince of Orange and his wife Princess Máxima attended the Dutch premiere of Black Book in The Hague on September 13, 2006.

Black Book received a Golden Film (100,000 visitors) within three days and Platinum Film (400,000 visitors) within three weeks after the premiere. The film won three Golden Calfs at the Netherlands Film Festival in 2006, for Best Actress (Carice van Houten), Best Director (Paul Verhoeven) and Best Film (San Fu Maltha).

The film is the Dutch submission for the Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

Despite the success, the Dutch press is divided about the film. Dana Linsen writes in NRC Handelsblad: "In Black Book, Verhoeven does not choose for moral discourse but for a human measure and he has given new colour to his work with the non-cynical approach of his female lead and with love." For literary critic Jessica Durlacher, daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, there is more at stake: "The reality of 1940-1945 as portrayed in Black Book compared to reality is like the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas compared to the original in Paris."

Before the film was released the rights have been sold to 52 countries.

The film was in the official selection of the 2006 Venice Film Festival, where the film had it's world premiere on September 1. In Venice it is nominated for a Golden Lion and won the Young Cinema Award for best international film. The film was also in the official selection of the 2006 Toronto Film Festival.

The international press is positive about the film and specificly about the performance of Carice van Houten. According to Jason Solomons in The Observer: "Black Book is great fun, an old-fashioned war movie in parts, but with deep undercurrents about fugitive Jews, the Resistance, collaborators and the messy politics of war. This being Verhoeven, there's lots of sex and a scene in which the extremely attractive star (Carice van Houten) dyes her pubic hair blond. That aside, hers is a star-making performance, putting even Scarlett [Johansson] in the shade." In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Dirk Schümer says Carice van Houten is not only more beautiful, but also a better actress than Scarlett Johansson. Furthermore he writes in his review: "Europe's Hollywood can actually be better than the original. With his basic instinct sharpened in California, Verhoeven demonstrates here the cinema as a medium of individual tragedy.