Gerard Soeteman was the screenwriter of impressive films about the powerless pursuit of ‘little people’

There will not be many Dutch people who have never heard a rule from Gerard Soeteman. « What kind of treatment is that? » says Floris to his attackers in the 1969 TV series of the same name. « A bit of war, pretty exciting, » says Rutger Hauer in Soldier of Orange (1977). « Life is just like a croquette: once you know what’s in it, you don’t have to. » (Renee Soutendijk in Spatter1980) Is there also one, or « Never stop? » (Carice van Houten in Blackbook2006). They are all from the pen of the most famous screenwriter of the Netherlands: Gerard Soeteman. He died on Friday, 88 years old, after a short sickbed, his family announced.

He made his most famous work with director Paul Verhoeven; In addition to the films mentioned above also among other things Turkish fruit (1973), Keetje Tippel (1975) and Verhoevens English -language debut Flesh & Blood (1985). Verhoeven and Soeteman, that was a golden combination, soeteman already achieved his greatest success in collaboration with Fons Rademakers with The attack (1986): He got an Oscar.

The war was a constant. The Second World War plays a major role in many of the films that he has written. That partly has an autobiographical background: the bombing of Rotterdam was one of the first memories of Soeteman, born in 1936. When he got through in 2019 de Volkskrant Is being interviewed, he immediately links that memory to a movie: “I saw the city on the arm on my father’s arm. It was later only matched by Gone with the windwith that big fire in Atlanta. ” For Soeteman, only film could match reality.

‘Fascistoid entertainment’

He started in 1955 with a study of Dutch language and literature- a film industry did not yet have a film industry in the 1950s- but soon he will work at the NTS (precursor of the NOS), where he works as a translator and screenwriter for TV documentaries. The decisive moment of his working life comes in 1967, when he is instructed to write a TV series in the style of Ivanhoe and the Flemish Johan and the Alverman. What they could do in Belgium also had to be possible in the Netherlands.

And that turned out: Floris was a great success. But Soeteman really came into his own when he started writing for the silver screen. Especially in the seventies and eighties, millions of Dutch people saw his films, in which the main characters are rarely the winners of society. Gloomy, socially critical films with a worldview that sometimes sands against nihilism. That is also because Soeteman wrote to films of Dutch novels, and especially Wolkers and Reve were not very optimistic authors.

He considered himself Spatter As his most important film, the story of a group of young people who wanted to escape their narrow environment. One succeeds, the other is unlucky, and that is told in an apparently moral story full of sex and violence: « Fascistoid entertainment » and « a deep -black pool for people whose spiritual growth has stopped after three years, » reviewers judge. The recognition came later, both for Spatter As for Soetemans work in general: in 2017 he was awarded a Golden Calf for film culture.

Socially involved

Moreover, a nihilistic writer was certainly not. Spatter He had just written to show the powerless endeavor of ‘little people’. In interviews he also liked to emphasize his social involvement. It was inspired by the war, but also by the following years, when he saw how difficult his communist father had to get back to work: « ideology is not good, that is going against you. I already realized that at the age of twelve, » he said in 2019. The Max Havelaar He also partly filmed to « question things. »

After Blackbook Is there no more film appearing on which Soeteman is on the credits as a screenwriter. Although he wrote to it Benedetta (2021), Paul Verhoevens film about a nun who not only shocked the church with her homosexuality, but also with her religious views. Soetemans Scenario was received as « a beautiful feminist pamphlet, » but after Verhoeens adjustments it was only about « the fruits to the genitals. And that doesn’t interest me, » said Soeteman, who had his name of the credits get.

Since then he wrote, but nothing was made anymore. In recent years he wrote for himself, from the Spanish coastal town where he lived with his husband Lyke Marree. That was also allowed, after all those millions of visitors for his films.

To share

Mail the editors