Black Book (2006) on Netflix
In the occupied Netherlands, Jewish singer Rachel Stein joins a resistance cell in The Hague as Ellis de Vries. To free captured comrades, she is asked to seduce SD commander Ludwig Müntze.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.7/1084,424 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes77%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Israel in 1956, the teacher Rachel Stein meets Ronnie, an old friend from The Hague, and the reunion brings back the war. In 1944, Rachel is hiding on a Dutch farm when an Allied bomber destroys it, and the lawyer Smaal arranges passage south with a policeman, Van Gein. Rachel boards a refugee boat with her family; a Nazi patrol boat ambushes it. She reaches The Hague, where the Resistance gives her the name Ellis de Vries and a place at Gerben Kuipers's soup kitchen. She joins a gun-smuggling run led by Hans Akkermans and meets SD commander Ludwig Müntze on the train. When Kuipers's son is arrested, she is asked to get close to Müntze.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Black Book (2006)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Shooting was delayed in 2004 by financial trouble and Paul Verhoeven's health, and when Carice van Houten was forced to return to the set from a play she had agreed to act in, the theatre company sued; the production company had to pay €60,000 for her unavailability.
- Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Gerard Soeteman worked on the script for 15 years, solving their story problems in the early 2000s by changing the main character from male to female.
- For the opening scene, the production blew up a real pre-war farm in the municipality of Hardenberg; the farm had already been declared uninhabitable and was ready to be demolished.
- In October 2006 twelve crew members and businessmen sued to bankrupt Zwartboek Productie B.V., the company set up for the film, over money some had waited more than a year for; producer Fu Works settled and promised to pay the creditors.
- Carice van Houten's Jewish spy Rachel Stein is based on the Dutch resistance fighter Esmée van Eeghen, while the betrayer Van Gein was based on the lives of Ans van Dijk and Andries Riphagen.
- The film's notary Smaal is based on the unsolved murder of a 65-year-old lawyer in The Hague on 30 May 1945, shortly after the liberation, who during the war had kept good contacts with the German Sicherheitsdienst.
- To film 1940s street scenes in the centre of The Hague, the crew built bunkers to cover up modern objects such as the entrance to an underground car park.
