Paul Verhoeven went back to Europe to make his latest movie, Black Book. Known for his outrageously bloody and sexual American films, he has not lost any of his flair for violence and nudity. But this World War II story applies them to a more realistic context than his sci-fi or sex thrillers.
Paul Verhoeven Talks Black Book
“There's less restraints there,” Verhoeven said. “Of course, there is nobody breathing over my shoulder. There are restraints financially and making an independent movie like Black Book in Europe is very difficult. From the artistic, let's say the creative point of view, I mean it's paradise of course. Nobody's telling me that I should not do this or that or too much sex or not enough sex. That's what they would never say here of course. Not enough sex, I've never heard that from a studio. But too much violence, or this, immoral situations, unethical stuff, a Nazi officer with a German Jewish girl, I mean an opportunistic girl that basically is not punished at the end. The immorality of that or lack of morals or absence of morals, all this stuff is possible in Europe.”
The story follows a Jewish woman in Germany romancing a Nazi officer to find their black book of wealthy Jews, to save those victims from being targeted. “I think if you have a narrative like in Black Book, I think that interest in me for narrative comes from the American cinema really, that I learned in these 20 years. There is something to say about not putting scenes together in a certain way but also have something underneath that makes the audience want to see more, to put question marks. What's going to happen to these two people? Is there a plot? Is there something behind this? Is there a mystery? It's very silly but they are dramatic questions… so I think that has always been a strong point of American cinema I feel. That is nice. I imported that in this movie and I asked my script writer to follow me there. I pushed it, I pushed it towards thriller and detective story so that there would be a thing like that.”
Black Book Poster
As he said, Verhoeven did have to re-adjust to European budgets. “I was never sure that I would shoot the next week because the money would not come in. You're working with a crew that has not been paid for months and they do it because they like that I did this movie and that it was a big movie and a European movie so they stayed. Otherwise they would have left. Now that is not a pleasant feeling, to work with a crew that is partially not paid, and to go do it. So I felt that was a bit nightmarish and I feel it's the case with every independent movie, and there are many of them that you start and they fall apart. This one even, money comes from 10, 15 sites and every site has their own rules… We shot the exteriors in Holland and the interiors in Babelsburg in Berlin. And post production was in England so basically it was hopping countries all the time.”
Black Book was a passion project for Verhoeven. “I picked partially because it happened in the Hague and I was a child in the Hague. So it happened all close to my heart. All these events happened, say, within three miles of my house. That's how small the city is and the German government was in the Hague. And of course the connection with the time and the place, I was living and I saw the dead bodies. I saw the bombs and I saw the big rockets fly over my house and all that stuff, dead people on the side executed and whatever. So there is certainly something personal about it. Of course I was a child and I was not in the resistance. My family was not Jewish basically. We were not persecuted. My father basically had to hide under the floor when the Germans came, otherwise he would be sent to work labor camps in Germany… So basically the whole quarter of the city next to my house was bombed and gone, but nobody died. My mother got sick but she survived so I wouldn't say that I was traumatized in any way by the war, no. I was interested later when I got older, when I started 16,17, I started really to ask myself what happened here in Europe?”
Black Book opens to theatres on April 4th.
For more movie info, go to the Black Book
Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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