Boefje

There were so few Dutch films made in the 30's and the 40's that I decided to watch 2 of them... out of curiosity.

One of them was Boefje.

The first thing that surprised me was that it was made by Douglas Sirk (billed as Detlef Sierck), who had recently left Nazi Germany because his second wife was Jewish. I could not see in this film any relation to the films made by the same Douglas Sirk in the US, not the same technique, not the themes he was later comfortable with... Nothing at all. It is as if it was another film maker altogether.

I can image that he made this film in the Netherlands to make some money before emigrating to the United States... This being said, it is not a bad film at all.

Lead actress Annie van Ees is totally credible as a 12 year-old petty hoodlum, even though she was about 45 herself at the time. She actually looks like an adolescent boy: her face & mannerisms... The only thing that "betrayed" her is when she runs. She looks like a girl running.

The fact that she played the role on stage before has a lot to do with the fact she fits the role perfectly.

On the other hand, her delivery is quite stagey and at times fairly annoying... Boefje was her only talking picture!

The last film Detlef Sierck made before he left for America and became Douglas Sirk .

The most remarkable thing in this forgotten movie is the lead: Annie Van Ees played the role of Jan on stage ,a male teenager,at 29 ; in Sirk 's effort ,she was 45 (you read well) and she is still thoroughly credible as a sixteen-year-old boy ; it's a performance only equaled by Julie Harris' who,at 27 , played the part of a twelve-year-old girl in Fred Zinneman ' s "the member of the wedding"(1952)

"Boefje" belongs to Sirk's melodramas, but arguably the only one which does not take place in a well-to do milieu ;we only catch a glimpse of this privileged class during the scene of the rich kid's birthday ,when he refuses to put his lips to the harmonica stolen and soiled by a hellion's lips .Jan is a Dutch urchin ,some kind of Victor Hugo's Gavroche ;In Rotterdam , he 's longing for the American dream : he would bring a box of cigars for Daddy , a hat with feathers for mom and a box of candies for his sisters ; poverty leads him to theft and without the intervention of the pastor ,he would end in jail where he would meet inmates worse than him: it would be his definitive downfall .

Religion men play a prominent part to get Jan back on the straight and narrow ,but there are no existential concerns ; they would later appear in such works as "the first legion" , "battle hymn ", and mainly in the discussion between the soldier and the professor (played by the author,Erich Maria Remarque ) in " a time to love and a time to die" but Sirk was not a believer and the Brothers' role is to act as guardian angels to their pupils, and to preserve the family unit. Grandiose ending with organ and choir , reminiscent of " das Mädchen vom Moorhof"(1935) and a forerunner of that of "imitation of life" (1959)

Humor is not absent : the stolen herrings and the flypaper on the pastor's sleeve .