Half a century earlier, Verhoeven and screenwriting partner Gerard Soeteman aimed to follow the bawdy sex comedy Business Is Business<\/em>, made for producer Rob Houwen, with something more substantial. They proposed an adaptation of Jan Wolkers\u2019s semi-autobiographical novel Turks Fruit<\/em>, a bestseller with a built-in audience. The resulting film, known as Turkish Delight<\/em> in English, fulfilled that promise and then some, breaking attendance records in Holland that still stand 50 years later. Its enormous success made instant stars of Monique van de Ven (an acting student making her screen debut) and Rutger Hauer (the hero of Verhoeven and Soeteman\u2019s television adventure series Floris<\/em>), and earned a nomination for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dutch moviegoers and Academy voters alike responded to the story of passionate sculptor Eric Vonk and his roller-coaster romance with the immature Olga, whose mother conspires to keep them apart. With its copious nudity (male and female), broad comedy, graphic violence, and matter-of-fact depictions of bodily functions, Turkish Delight<\/em> is as in-your-face as they come, running the gamut from bawdy to lyrical, farcical to tragic. It\u2019s also loaded with symbolism and foreshadowing, sturdy narrative devices Verhoeven and Soeteman returned to in their subsequent collaborations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the Best Dutch Film of the Century under his belt (as voted at the Nederlands Film Festival in 1999), Verhoeven was given the wherewithal to make Keetje Tippel<\/em>, a period piece set in late-19th-century Amsterdam that again paired Monique van de Ven (as the title character) with Rutger Hauer. In tandem with Soeteman and cinematographer Jan de Bont (who also shot Business Is Business<\/em> and Turkish Delight<\/em>), Verhoeven brought as much verisimilitude to the project as he could muster, painting an unsentimental portrait of poverty and the things a young woman had to be prepared to do to claw her way out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Keetje Tippel<\/em> failed to reach the same heights as its predecessor, Verhoeven and Soeteman regrouped and emerged with their most ambitious film yet, the World War II tale Soldaat van Oranje\/Soldier of Orange<\/em>. Tackling themes and situations they would revisit three decades later when Verhoeven returned to Holland to make 2006\u2019s Black Book<\/em>, Soldier of Orange<\/em> covers seven years in the lives of six university students, concentrating on the period between Nazi Germany\u2019s invasion of Holland in May 1940 and the country\u2019s liberation five years later. During the war, each takes his own path, some joining the resistance, others siding with the occupiers, but Verhoeven and Soeteman decline to judge any of them. At the same time, they specify when each meets their maker \u2013 whether by firing squad, assassination, bomb, or guillotine \u2013 until just two are left standing when the credits roll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On his commentary for Anchor Bay, Verhoeven expressed his disappointment with the \u201cneutral\u201d reaction to Soldier of Orange<\/em>, but that didn\u2019t prevent its expansion into a four-part miniseries for Dutch television in 1979. That same year, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association voted it Best Foreign Film, setting the stage for its nomination in the same category at the Golden Globes and marking the beginning of Verhoeven\u2019s concerted efforts to find a project that would take him to America. By that time, Verhoeven had parted ways with producer Rob Houwer and formed a partnership with Joop van den Ende, which resulted in an hour-long TV movie and Spetters<\/em> (released on Blu-ray by KL Studio Classics, but still not streaming). In contrast with the upper-class backgrounds of the protagonists of Soldier of Orange<\/em>, the three \u201cgood-looking young men\u201d of Spetters<\/em> (that\u2019s what the title is slang for) are decidedly blue collar, and their objective is using motocross to get a leg up in the world. In this, their idol is dentist-turned-motocross champion Rutger Hauer, a hometown hero in league with a TV presenter played by his Soldier of Orange<\/em> co-star Jeroen Krabb\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hauer and Krabb\u00e9 aside, the cast of Spetters<\/em> is mostly unknowns, with the highest profile going to Ren\u00e9e Soutendijk as an ambitious outsider who believes one of the boys will be her ticket out of the cramped trailer\/food truck she shares with her brother. Her character\u2019s mercenary attitude carried over to Verhoeven\u2019s next film, 1983\u2019s De vierde man\/The Fourth Man<\/em>, based on a novella by gay writer Gerard Reve, who wove his devout Catholicism into the text. Verhoeven and Soeteman followed suit, ramping up the religious imagery as Gerard (Krabb\u00e9, playing a character based on the author) becomes ensnared in the web of thrice-widowed hair salon owner Christine (Soutendijk), believing he\u2019s<\/em> using her<\/em> to get to her current beau, a hunky plumber whose trade aligns him with the male leads from Spetters<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Full of dreams, fantasies, visions, and premonitions \u2013 many of them had by Gerard, who admits he \u201clie[s] the truth\u201d to the literary society that pays his way to their provincial town for a speaking engagement \u2013 The Fourth Man<\/em> was Verhoeven and Soeteman\u2019s joke on the critics who pilloried Spetters<\/em>, yet praised them for their sophisticated use of symbolism. In fact, The Fourth Man<\/em> earned their best reviews since Turkish Delight<\/em>, picking up the International Critics\u2019 Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and Verhoeven\u2019s second LACFA Award for Best Foreign Film along the way. With this momentum behind him, Verhoeven took his first half-step away from the Netherlands with the international co-production Flesh + Blood<\/em>, for which Orion Pictures footed part of the bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The gritty medieval epic\u2019s production, undertaken in Spain and shot in English, was far from smooth sailing, though, and ultimately brought an end to Verhoeven\u2019s professional relationship with Rutger Hauer, his cinematic alter ego. It also marked his last collaboration with Gerard Soeteman for two decades. Verhoeven was undeterred, however, and moved to the United States in 1985 to take the reins of another Orion project that would be his first \u2013 but not his last \u2013 foray into the realm of science fiction. As bumpy as the journey from Holland to Hollywood had been, once he had RoboCop<\/em> in the can, Verhoeven was off and running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/soldier-of-orange-1024x576.jpg\")
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