Soldaat van Oranje
Tags: suspenseful, realism

Plot synopsis:
The film is about a group of students from Leiden, the Netherlands, amongst them Erik Lanshof (Rutger Hauer), Guus LeJeune (Jeroen Krabbé), Jan Weinberg (Huib Rooymans), and Alex (Derek de Lint). Robby Froost (Eddy Habbema) is a friend of Erik, and Esther (Belinda Meuldijk) is Robby's girlfriend. Each of them follow a different path and therefore have a different role in World War II, either as a collaborator or in the resistance. Part of the story is set in London, where Queen Wilhelmina (Andrea Domburg) has residence. The students Erik and Guus fight alongside Colonel Rafelli (Edward Fox) and soldier Susan (Susan Penhaligon) of the allied forces in London.
The film begins with a flashforward in the form of a newsreel with a voice-over. Queen Wilhelmina is accompanied by Erik arriving in the Netherlands from London shortly after World War II. After the newsreel, the film starts in the late 1930s in Leiden, where freshmen undergo the humiliation of the initiation rites of their fraternity. Erik is picked out by Guus, the chair of the fraternity, who throws a bowl of soup over his head and injures him with the bowl. After this accident, Guus apologises to Erik, the two become close friends, and Guus offers him a room in his private student house in the centre of Leiden. In this house, the students (Erik, Guus, Jacques, Jan, and Alex) have a drink which confirms their new friendships.
In September 1939, an English radio broadcasting interrupts the students in a tennis match and announces the declaration of war by the United Kingdom against Germany. In the beginning, the students seem to take things lightly believing that the Netherlands will probably remain neutral as in World War I. Jan, who is a Jew, and also Alex, who has a German mother, immediately join the Dutch army. In May 1940, Germany invades the Netherlands and Erik and Guus try to join the army, too, but they are not accepted by a traumatised army officer. Shortly thereafter, the Netherlands capitulates due to the Rotterdam Blitz. Erik has an affair with Esther.
Robby has a radio transmitter in his garden shed from where he contacts the Dutch resistance in London. He arranges for Erik to take a flight to London. The Jewish Jan, student and boxing champion, gets into trouble by fighting with two anti-Semitic collaborators, who were bullying a Jewish salesman. Because of this, Erik offers his place on the airplane to Jan. However, during the pickup they get into a fight with German soldiers, and Jan gets captured. Erik is able to escape.
When Erik meets Alex during a military parade, he finds out Alex is now fighting on the German side for the SS. Later, Erik is also captured. In prison, he hears from Jan that a man called Van der Zanden is the traitor in London. Jan is executed at the Waalsdorpervlakte dune area. Robby's radio installation is discovered, and he is blackmailed by the Gestapo to cooperate as a spy, because his fiancée Esther is a Jew.
Erik and Guus try to flee to London again, this time successfully on the Swiss cargo St. Cergue. In London, Erik meets Van der Zanden (modelled after general François van 't Sant) and tries to kill him, but he appears not to be a traitor but head of the Dutch Central Intelligence Service and a trustee of the Dutch Queen. Guus has an affair with a British soldier Susan. Erik and Guus agree with the Queen to pick up some resistance leaders who could play an important role in the Netherlands after the war. Guus is dropped on the beach and tricks himself into a party nearby. Now, Erik has an affair with Susan.
Erik comes back to the Netherlands to pick up Guus and the resistance leaders. However, Robby is with them on the beach and the Germans have followed the group who are about to escape by sea. Erik tries to warn them about Robby but cannot reach them. On his way to the beach, Erik runs into Alex at a Nazi party and dances ballroom tango with him. Erik is able to flee the party onto the beach and meets the others. When Robby realises that Erik knows about his collaboration, he fires a light signal and flees. The group tries to escape, but the resistance leaders are killed. Guus escapes swimming into the sea, but only Erik is able to reach the British ship and returns to London and to Susan.
Another day, Guus meets Robby and shoots him in the middle of the street. Guus gets caught and is executed by guillotine. In Russia, Alex is killed in a latrine by a hand grenade thrown by a boy whom he had insulted earlier when he begged him for food. Erik becomes an RAF pilot and drops bombs over Germany.
Later Erik is appointed assistant to the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, and accompanies her back to the Netherlands after the war, as shown in the newsreel in the beginning of the film. In the end, Erik meets Esther and finds that Dutch citizens have cut her hair short in anger of her and Robby's collaboration with the Nazis. She says she bears no grudge against anyone for this. Finally, Erik celebrates the end of the war with one of his fellow students, Jacques ten Brinck, who also survived the war.

Review: Paul Verhoeven's Soldaat van Oranje (aka: Soldier Of Orange), the religious excesses of his Flesh + Blood (1985) not withstanding, is probably the closest the director has come to an epic.
There are some familiar faces in the large cast: Jeroen Krabbé (as Guus Le Jeune) who took the lead in De Vierde Man (aka: The Fourth Man) is a key protagonist, and the svelte and good-looking Rutger Hauer, as the central character Erik Lanshof.
The blond Hauer, who had until now been utilised by Verhoeven as a working class hero in such films as Turks Fruit (aka: Turkish Delight, 1973), and afterwards in Spetters (1980) is here transformed into a prosperous war hero, modelled on Erik Roelfzema, the author of the original dramatic memoir.
Made at a time when Netherlanders were starting to face the realities of their wartime existence, unpleasant facts about home collaboration and acquiescence to occupation, Verhoeven's film confronts these issues with a tale of student friends torn apart by war, having to face moral dilemmas and choices.
(A striking scene which makes one regret Verhoeven's recent descent into the special effects laden un-subtlety of the Hollow Man.) The episodic nature of the narrative is both a blessing and a curse: while the number of characters and subplots makes it possible to examine a society from a range of viewpoints, the lack of a single, strong momentum leads to occasional slacking of tension.The abiding impression gained at the end of this long (167 minutes) film is that nothing in this war has been black and white, and Verhoeven has faithfully suggested the historical revisionism of the time.
It's nice to know that, in this era of Hollywood churning out films that look more like video games or music videos, Verhoeven continues to make films that push envelopes and give the audience something to think about.Soldaat van Oranje, like its American counterpart twenty years later, is a film about war that takes its subject by the horns and doesn't let go at any moment.
As we are introduced to the group of Dutch students whose eyes we see World War II through, we see a reflection of one rarely acknowledged truth: that numerous ordinary, everyday people, ignorant of what was really going on in Nazi Germany, couldn't have cared less about what was going on.
Indeed, early on in the film, Hauer's character even says that a spot of war would be "exciting".Another reality that this film prefers to hit the viewer square in the face with is that while the war changed a lot of aspects of everyday life for everyone, there were some things that stayed the same regardless.
This is the self-penned true story of the Dutch war hero Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, and his college friends from Leiden who endured the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and, who eventually, lived to see the Liberation.
Soldaat van Oranje is Paul Verhoeven's war movie, one that already shows his early leaning towards grungy realism - graphic torture, debased human nature and plenty of bare boobies - which is why it had a pretty mixed reception when it came out here in Holland.
Highlighting some now internationally famous Dutch actors - Rutger Hauer, Derek de Lint, Jeroen Krabbé as well as locally known actors like Belinda Meuldijk, Rijk de Gooyer and this is also a showcase of acting talent during the seventies and early eighties.
British seventies actors Susan Penhaligon and Edward Fox (A Bridge Too Far) also have interesting performances.Based on the memoirs of Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema (Erik Lanshof in the movie), this is a reasonably realistic and truthful recounting of war and resistance during world war two.
We see that it takes serious, quick wit and nerves of steel to be a secret agent, and that one can rarely count on the plan (the phone that no longer took dimes was an exceptional and realistic surprise!)  It is also one of the only films I have seen to take a look at the war from the Dutch perspective.
SOLDIER OF ORANGE is a film about a group of friends who encounter the occupation of Holland by the Germans in different ways.
True story of Erik Hazelhof, a young university lad who becomes involved in the Dutch resistance movement during WWII.
An eye-opening film about Dutch resistance against the Nazi German occupation..
Only reluctantly did she accept the advice of her ministers that she would be more effective as a symbol of resistance abroad persuaded her to accept the British offer to fly her out of her beloved country.And yet, despite the exciting episodes of Dutch resistance and espionage against the German occupiers, what proved more interesting to me was the depiction of student life at the universities.
The whole story is there: danger, how people were forced into collaborating, how others willingly collaborated, torture at the hands of the Gestapo, death the penalty for getting caught, how Erik survived.The best Verhoeven movie readily available in the USA, what a contrast to the trash he turned out in the 1990s.
For example, Erik Lanshof is actually Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema .This film depicts World War II through the eyes of six Dutch students (Rutger Hauer , Jeroen Krabbe , Derek De Lint , among others) .
It begins in Univerity Leiden ,the Netherlands , 1938 , with various young Dutch Students just before the outbreak of World War 2 and finishes with the liberation .
Later on , Erik Lanshof (Rutger Hauer) is assigned by an exiled Queen Wilhelmina (Andrea Domburg who used cotton paddings in her cheeks to better resemble Queen) and his helper colonel Rafelli (Edward Fox) to carry out a dangerous mission during Nazi downfall.This thrilling , cerebral WWII picture is plenty of suspense, emotion , action and is pretty entertaining .
Based on actual events about Queen Wilhelmina and her real aide-de-camp, Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, the author of the book on which the film is screen-written ; even appearing in the opening scene, a genuine newsreel footage .
Based on real happenings , though some names of historic persons are modified , one of the reasons for the change in names may be that, for clarity and simplicity, the number of characters from the original story were reduced, and as a consequence, some historic actions are ascribed to other people in the movie, so as to acknowledge this deviation from reality , some names may have been altered.
Good acting by Rutger Hauer who made him an international star , he plays as a valiant official named Erik , though Director Paul Verhoeven originally wanted Derek De Lint to play Erik Lanshof, the title character .
Nice special effects , as the explosions were provided not by technicians but by the Dutch Marines , as director Paul Verhoeven stated that the explosive charges were held in place with metal ; when one of the charges was set off, it blew the metal to bits , even one of the flying fragments nearly killed star Rutger Hauer .
But I later came to like that style, maybe because war, like life, is "just one damned thing after another".I'd love to read the memoir it's based on, but the last time I looked it hadn't been translated into English.I wonder if Verhoeven ever looks back and wishes he could have/would have made more like this instead of Showgirls, Robocop, and such..
In "Soldaat van Oranje" (called "Soldier of Orange" in English), Paul Verhoeven brilliantly tells the story of several Dutch students resisting the Nazi occupation.
But after the invasion, everyone sees their duty to defend the Netherlands.All in all, I think that most people would have to agree that Paul Verhoeven's movies in his native Holland were just better (he's made some good ones here, but they have all been popcorn movies).
a movie about world war II it seems to be the best dutch movie of all time.
The film Soldier of Orange is based on the book Soldaat van Oranje written by Erik Hazelhoff Roelzema which is an memoire.
Because of his activities in the second world war, Erik was awarded by the Queen to become her personal adjudant, a soldier of orange (orange being the house colour of the dutch royal family).The fact that this movie is so good is that it clearly shows how people (and in this movie: students) make choices in the war and how these choices made affect relationships between these people.
There are a few key-figures in this movie, Erik being the main character and the rest of his student friends (e.g. Alex, Guus).
The band of students which was so close at the start of the war falls apart during the war.Another thing that makes the movie that good is the fact that it shows that the collaboration in the Netherlands was massive during the Second World War and most of the resistance was amateurism.
For the same reason Erik could have joined the luftwaffe if the opportunity to do so was there.Summary, the movie gives a nice picture of the dutch people during the Second World War, some people joined the resistance, much people collaborated and alas the most of the dutch people kept quiet and hoped to live to see the end of the war (in the most possitive case they performed passive resistance against the Germans).
Both Rutger and Jeroen act very natural, an appealing story, well mastered by Paul and  I like the different languages used in the movie making it more realistic.
SOLDIER OF ORANGE is a dutch film about 5 friends and the roads in life they choose after the nazi blitzkreig tears through holland in 1940.
The film is in dutch and german with subtitles yet for the sequences in ENGLAND where RUTGER HAUERS character gets his OSS training all dialogue is in english.
It is a spy thriller that begins and ends like a coming-of-age film about a circle of aloof, airy friends, some of whom make it to the end and some of whom don't.In some way, upon reflection, I can see how this early effort by Verhoeven, and his two regular pre-U.S. stars Hauer and Jeroen Krabbe, benefits from its incongruous lack of involvement.
In any case, I could still be wrong, as the cliché love triangles, token romantic interests and ignored moral dichotomies of seemingly incidental things certain characters do abound.Perhaps Verhoeven was not yet ready to make the Dutch Resistance film he knew he should make.
Although I am Dutch, I am not nationalistic when I say this is the very best of all war movies I have seen.
Though not packed with overwhelming in battle action like Saving Private Ryan movies of our time, the spirit of people in war is depicted better than in any other I have seen.
Sometimes I can agree with the somewhat cold Rutger Hauer character, to just survive, and I can understand the student in the end that did nothing in the war, but survived!
Especially Guus, one of the very best characters ever on the screen, brilliantly depicted by Jeroen Krabbe - I still hate Paul Verhoeven, and the War for not allowing him to make it to peace!
Subtitles will not make up for it either.The original Dutch version is arguably one of the best war movies ever made.
World War II changes the lives of six Dutch University students....
"Soldier of Orange" (1977) is a sentimental film about World War II and how it affects the lives of six university students in Holland.
They each are involved in the war in various ways and their lives separate and intertwine throughout the film, but in the end only two survive.It's a great movie and I think it's one of the best of the '70s.
I first saw this movie around 1980 and have seen it about two more times since.Rutger Hauer is very good in this movie and I like that aloof Susan Penhaligon.
For example, fate of the Baltic nations was even more tragic and disruptive...Anyway, the film in question is well written, directed and played; names like Paul Verhoeven, Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbé are currently internationally known and appraised, before that they were active mostly in the local scene.
This is one of those amazing war/adventure movies like The Great Escape, or Bridge on The River Kwai, or Stalag 17, that knocks your socks off.I have re-watched it several times over the years, and it never gets old.The action is good.
The "Soldaat van Oranje" is at this point still the best Dutch-produced movie ever.
The combination of more or less true historical settings together with Verhoeven as director and the twosome Hauer/Krabbe makes this movie a classic.
Which leaves us with a clearer view on three histories: that of the merciless student world (a history that is still present today), that of the Dutch WW II resistance, and that of the naive nature of mankind, which is always looking for adventure, but is unable to understand adventure as anything other than a game and is always getting in trouble when the adventure gets real.Insightful and respectful to both the people that were in the war as to history itself, Soldaat van Oranje ranks among classic WW II pieces as A Bridge Too Far, L'Armee des Ombres and Schindler's List, and is far more entertaining..
Every year this movie is on Dutch TV at "Dodenherdenking" (Remembrance of the Fallen in WWII) on the fourth of May.Although the theme is typical Verhoeven, with a protagonist and an antagonist who both deserve our empathy, Soldier of Orange is actually based on the autobiographic book "Soldaat van Oranje" by Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema.
Each student follows a different path and therefore has a different role in World War II, either as a collaborator or in the resistance.The film begins with an original newsreel about the return of Queen Wilhelmina accompanied by Erik, the protagonist of the movie played by Rutger Hauer (Nighthawks, Blade Runner).
After that the film starts in the late 1930s in Leiden, where freshmen undergo the humiliation of the initiation rites of their fraternity and the drama unfolds.Those who don't know the book will think that this movie is full of Verhoeven's trademarks: explicit violence and sex and social satire, but these scenes are personal memoirs of the writer.
It combines action, adventure and personal drama with the looks of a huge budget film like The Longest Day but even better, because it connects people to the real life characters.
Watch f.e. the weird Tango scene (Danse Macabre) with the protagonist and the antagonist who is played by Derek the Lint (The Unbearable Lightness of Being).This movie has a nostalgic feel, but if you don't like old movies or you can't get a copy of Soldier of Orange, I strongly recommend Verhoeven's "Black Book" (2007).
SOLDIER OF ORANGE is a nice, rarely known Paul Verhoeven movie, shot in his native Holland and starring his one-time favourite actor, Rutger Hauer.
Hauer and Jeroen Krabbe (THE FOURTH MAN) make for an excellent double act as the idealistic students who find themselves drawn into a war of resistance against the Nazis.The sense of place in SOLDIER OF ORANGE is excellent, and the realistic portrayal of events - there's no gung-ho stuff here - makes it feel almost documentary-like at times.
Paul Verhoeven and Rutger Hauer first joined forces when making 'Floris', a Dutch TV series for kids inspired by ITV's 'Ivanhoe', in the late 1960s.
While not remotely as well made as its British forerunner - a recent documentary shows that it was very much learning by doing - the episodes you can now watch on YouTube are quite amusing, given the right age and nationality.'Soldaat van Oranje' (Soldier of Orange) is based on the eponymous memoirs of Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, who received the highest Dutch military decoration for his actions during WW II.
Good war movies don't necessarily need a message, but they need a feeling: We want to sense what the war experience was like for a specific group of people at a particular time.
It traces the stories of six Dutch soldiers through the years before and during World War II, and at the movie's end we feel we know these people and have learned from their experiences.
I've seen a lot of good reviews from Dutch fans, and let me say as a viewer in the USA, I also thought this was one of the best portraits of people during war.
From director Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls), this Dutch film was one I found in the book of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, the title made it perfectly obvious what the genre, and I was surprised to see familiar names in the cast, so I was looking forward it.
Verhoeven directs this film splendidly, and with Dutch, German and English language it has good authenticity to it, it is based on the true story of the real escapades of Erik Lanshof and the invasion of Holland, it works well with both the character stories and adventures, and of course for the fantastic battle sequences filled with guns and explosions aplenty, it is definitely a Second World War drama to see.
Yes, Paul Verhoeven, before making Hollywood science fiction schlock (albeit entertaining) movies like Starship Troopers and Hollow Man, once made what are considered some of the Netherlands' classic films.
(What sells more tickets?) This is his first Dutch movie I've seen.Soldier of Orange is a story of university students caught in the wake of the Nazi invasion during World War II.
Verhoeven's Best Dutch Film.
This is Paul Verhoeven's best Dutch film.
Rutger Hauer stars in this film and the other Dutch films directed by Paul Verhoeven he starred in are Turkish Delight, Katie Tippal, and Spetters.
The first Dutch film by Paul Verhoeven I saw was Spetters.