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From: mf@cornell.UUCP (mf)
Newsgroups: net.movies,net.motss
Subject: Dutch Movies
Message-ID: <1156@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-Jan-85 19:00:22 EST
Article-I.D.: cornell.1156
Posted: Sat Jan 12 19:00:22 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 14-Jan-85 01:22:34 EST
Reply-To: (Uucp) cornell!mf (ARPA) mf@cornell-gvax (Bitnet) MF AT CRNLCS
Organization: Cornell U
Lines: 51
Keywords: The Fourth Man, A Question of Silence
Xref: watmath net.movies:5444 net.motss:1419


	[ Excerpts from a 5-page long review of 2 films ]
	[ in the Dec. issue of `Commentary.''           ]

If you are a neurotic, alcoholic, Mariolatrous, Catholic, homosexual on the
verge of going over the edge, have I got the film for you!  It is Dutch, yes,
Dutch, ``The 4th Man/''  For Holland has suddenly developed a first-rate
``quality'' cinema, capable of turning out decadent films with the best of
them--films on the cutting edge of the new sensibility and even of social
change, such as ``A Question of Silence,'' a movie so rabidly feminist
as to be pathological, the most lunatic feminist film I have ever seen.  And
both movies are skillfully directed, of course, for Holland is hot.  [...]

``The 4th Man'' is based on a loosely autobiographical novel by a Dutch *enfant
terrible* named Richard Reve, who has spent most of his life alternately winning
Dutch literary prizes and scandalizing the Dutch public.  Openly homosexual, he
converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of 35, brought to trial for ``comtemp-
tuous blasphemy'' in 1966, won yet another literary prize in 1968, upon which he
kissed the Minister of Culture enthusiastically, and later gave a televised
party at the Church of the Sacred Heart to celebrate. [...]

The film stays fairly close to the Reve novel.  Not to put too fine a point
on it, it is about a man with an obsessive dead of women, or at least of
aggressive, sexual women.  If the woman could arrange to be like the Virgin
Mary, of course, Holly Mary Mother of God, that would be something else.  But
how often can you expect a break like that?  Under the film's opening titles 
we see a crucifix, with the crucified Christ, and over Christ's face, portrayed
in his final agony, a spider has woven her web.  A fly gas become caught in
the web, and the spider is slowly beginning to devour him.  [...]

As I said, if you are a neurotic, Mariolatrous, homosexual with a morbid dread
of aggressive women, this is the film for you.  The big surprise, however, is
that droves of apparently healthy heterosexual Protestants and Jews are seeing
``the 4th Man'' also, plus, no doubt, many a backsliding heterosexual Catholic,
to the point that it is by far the most successful film of the season. [...]

So you see, Holland, perhaps made especially popular by the neutralist
climate Walter Laqueur calls Hollanditis, has suddenly leaped into the
very vanguard of world cinema, dealing with the most audacious and timely
themes.  It has produced the most hyper-feminist film ever made anywhere,
plus a lush homosexual psycho-thriller inspired entirely by a dread of
women.  The feminist film proved to have an intense attraction for a quite
tiny audience, whereas the homosexual gynophobic movie verged on having rather
broad appeal.  Judging by the highly unreliable indicator of reactions to
these two new movies, then, the question of whether aggressive women are
nowadays felt to be wonderful or something of a menace is being answered in
favor of ``menace''--and by a big margin at that.


	[ For those who don't have the OED on their desk, `Mariolatry' ]
 	[ is an exagerated cult of the Virgin Mary.                    ]