‘The Last Vermeer’, Directorial Debut of Dan Friedkin
By: Sydney Levine
Tags: Movies, Dutch, Art, World War II, Jewish

‘The Last Vermeer’, Directorial Debut of Dan Friedkin

The directorial debut of Dan Friedkin, who has produced or exec produced such hits as ‘The Square‘, ‘All the Money in the World’, and ‘The Mule’. ‘The Last Vermeer’ is the true post-WWII story of the notorious art dealer Han van Meegeren whose activities reveal a mastermind of a very special nature. TriStar Pictures is releasing it on screen in over 800 theatres on November 20th. The story of the film as well as the story of the making of the film are both quite engrossing. Sydney Levine Follow Nov 19, 2020 · 9 min read

Starring Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential, Memento), Claes Bang (The Square), and Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread), written by James McGee and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and based on the book “The Man Who Made Vermeers” by Jonathan Lopez, The Last Vermeer is somewhat reminiscent in setting, time period and style to the 2018 Dutch film The Resistance Banker. That said, the beauty of Amsterdam is always a joy to behold, just as good movies of Paris are always worth catching. So watching this story unfold was always interesting and its twists and turns kept me interested throughout.

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Henricus Antonius van Meegeren (Deventer, Overijssel, 1889-Ámsterdam, 1947), better known as Hans van Meegeren, was a Dutch painter and portraitist, considered one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century. When art critics despised his work, Van Meegeren decided to demonstrate his talent by forging paintings by some of the most famous Dutch artists: Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch, and especially Johannes Vermeer. Experts and art critics believed that his paintings were authentic. His most successful forgery was “The Supper at Emmaus”, created in 1937, in the manner of Vermeer. It was based on “The Supper at Emmaus” by Caravaggio, from the Pinacoteca de Brera. The work was acquired by the Rembrandt Society for 520,000 florins (about $ 4 million today), with the help of shipping magnate Willem van der Vorm, and donated to the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam.

It was one of the great forgeries in art history, one of many that allowed Hans van Meegeren to amass enough of a fortune to buy 52 properties and 15 country homes throughout Europe.

The work had been sold in 1942 to the Nazi banker and art dealer Alois Miedl and he later sold it to Field Marshall Hermann Göring for 1.65 million florins (about $ 7 million today). At the time it was believed that only 34 authentic works by the painter existed, but Göring did not know that the work was actually painted by Van Meegeren himself.

Allied forces found the false Vermeer of Göring in a salt mine in Austria after the war and traced its provenance to Van Meegeren in Amsterdam. Van Meeregen was arrested on May 29, 1945 as a collaborator of the Nazis, because they thought he had sold them a work that was Dutch heritage. The forger then had two options: surrender to a death sentence as a Nazi collaborator who sold a Dutch masterpiece to Hitler’s second, or confess, and become something of a national hero in the process. Van Meegeren chose the latter, admitting that he cheated on the Nazi for a shamefully exorbitant sum. On November 12, 1947 he was convicted of forgery and fraud and sentenced to only one year in prison, which he never served because before being incarcerated, he suffered a heart attack and died on December 30, 1947. It is estimated that Van Meeregen scammed out of several million dollars.

Guy Pearces as Hans van Meegeren

While Joseph Piller (Bang), a Dutch Jew, was fighting in the Resistance during the Second World War, the witty, debonair aesthete, Han van Meegeren (Pearce) was hosting hedonistic soirées and selling Dutch art treasures to Hermann Goring and other top Nazis. Following the war, Piller becomes an investigator assigned the task of identifying and redistributing stolen art, resulting in the flamboyant van Meegeren being accused of collaboration — a crime punishable by death. But, despite mounting evidence, Piller, with the aid of his assistant (Krieps), Piller becomes increasingly convinced of Han’s innocence and finds himself in the unlikely position of fighting to save his life.

Claes Bang (The Square), and Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread)

The film premiered in Telluride and Toronto 2019.

“The heartbeat of The Last Vermeer is the question of, what is art and what makes something a fake or not,” says director Dan Friedkin. “People can create convenient answers for that. And sometimes, it’s a moral consideration or a decision that impacts the value of art. I was fascinated with that, and these are issues that are personal to me and which I’ve been thinking about and deliberating over for a long time. Joseph Piller is trying to determine what’s right or wrong, and Han van Meegeren contains another layer that is specific to him, and it all stems from those undercurrents.”

Friedkin’s cofounder in Imperative Entertainment, producer Bradley Thomas (There’s Something About Mary, The Square, All the Money in the World), adds, “The nature of truth is something very crucial to what we’re seeing today. It’s always been very interesting to Friedkin and me how quality is subjective — how the driving up of prices in the art world, for instance, is connected to what someone says a piece of art is worth.”

Says Friedkin, “I have a close friend who asked me if I had heard of Han van Meegeren. He knew I was interested in the art world, that I love history and spent a great deal of my youth in Europe learning from my father about art and the history of WWII. So I spent some time reading about van Meegeren, and thought it was a great story that dealt with themes that are of particular interest to me, and things I often think about in my life.

I hired a writer for an early draft, and then met Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby in relation to a different script. When I told them the van Meegeren story, they asked to take a crack at it.”

“After we got the script from them, it went to the very top of the list of things we wanted to do.” Producer Ryan Friedkin notes that as the Imperative Entertainment team was developing the script with Fergus and Ostby — the team who created TV’s hit sci-fi drama The Expanse and whose film credits include Jon Favreau’s inaugural Marvel Universe blockbuster Iron Man and an Oscar nomination for Alfonso Cuarón’s seminal Children of Men — they were simultaneously in production on director Ridley Scott’s 2018 drama All the Money in the World. Dan Friedkin says he was on the set of World every day and watched Scott “every waking moment”; while observing the multiple Oscar-nominated Scott bring another major film to fruition, Friedkin found his own viewpoint was more of a director’s than a producer’s.

Growing up, Friedkin was always interested in cameras and storytelling, as well as playing music and songwriting. He says he saw the film of The Last Vermeer in his mind, and with encouragement from Scott, he decided the time was right to put his considerable passion, energy, and skill into directing.

“Dan and I are good friends, and when we were talking about putting Imperative Entertainment together, we of course talked about what kinds of films we wanted to make,” says Thomas. “Killers of the Flower Moon was a project we aimed to acquire, so we bought David Grann’s book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI and got it into production for Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Leonardo DiCaprio.” That eagerly anticipated drama from the three Oscar winners — the first to costar De Niro and DiCaprio in a film directed by Scorsese — is due in late 2020 or 2021.

“The second story he liked was that of Han van Meergan,” says Thomas. “When Dan told it to me, I said it’s fascinating and totally sounds like a movie.” “Dan always had this passion to direct,” continues Thomas. “So after he and Ryan hired writers to take a crack at the van Meegeren film, he said he wanted it to be his directorial debut.

Dan spent a great deal of his childhood and young adulthood in Europe, and was always drawn to these kinds of films, and has extensive knowledge of cameras and history and World War II. It was a great combination for this.” Friedkin — who watched Carol Reed’s classic The Third Man, Stephen Daldry’s The Reader, and the films of Paul Thomas Anderson in preparation for stepping behind the camera — knew that his belief that the crucial distinctions and decisions in life lie in the morally grey areas, was perfectly suited for The Last Vermeer.

Like his father, Friedkin is an airplane enthusiast, among many other things, and is the founder and chairman of the Air Force Heritage Flight Foundation. (Collecting vintage planes is a passion Dan and Thomas shared.) He combined his love of flying and his love of films by flying the WWII-era Spitfire planes used at the final beach landing scene in Christopher Nolan’s 2017 Oscar winner Dunkirk, in which Tom Hardy’s plane runs out of fuel and attempts one final circle to attack a German plane. (Thomas Friedkin, too, did pilot work in films from the 1970s to the ’90s, including Clint Eastwood’s The Gauntlet and The Rookie, Tod Kotcheff’s Uncommon Valor, and John Badham’s genre-maker Blue Thunder.)

The Netherlands Film Commission, a division of the Netherlands Film Fund, did work alongside L.A.-based production company Imperative Entertainment to support their film project entitled The Last Vermeer for their shoot in the Netherlands.

The infamous art forger Mr. van Meegeren ‘worked’ in Amsterdam, and so, the story was set in Amsterdam and across the Netherlands.

The Netherlands Film Commission runs a research support program offering local locations search and providing a recce including accommodation in the Netherlands to help a production such as this.

The NFC guided them through the Dutch film industry and connected the Imperative producers with as many Dutch-based production companies as they wanted. Imperative Entertainment was aiming to tap into the Production Incentive, which is a 35% cash rebate and is operated by the Netherlands Film Fund.

The incentive application and 16 days shoot in the Netherlands were handled by Dutch-based production company NL Films, Sabine Brian, and included a substantial Dutch crew base, and was line produced by Elwin Looije.

Bas van der Ree, the Netherlands Film Commissioner with whom I happily worked for 18 months told me,“ The Netherlands is very proud to have been able to host Dan Friedkin’s Director’s debut.”

The Last Vermeer was also produced by four-time Oscar nominee Ridley Scott, along with Gino Falsetto, Peter Heslop, Ryan Friedkin, Danny Friedkin, and Bradley Thomas; Written by James McGee and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby (Children of Men, Iron Man); Cinematography by Remi Adefarasin (Elizabeth); Costumes by Guy Speranza (Stan & Ollie).

This is the first film to use ARRI’s new 4K digital camera, Alexa LF. Using Cooke 7i primes and Alura zooms, the film was shot in LF Open Gate for a 1.85:1 4K result. Friedkin — a lifelong camera buff and an expert in action photography — was excited to utilize it. “I’ve loved using RED cameras for action photography, but I think the ALEXA LF has really nailed the emulsion-like quality that approximates film stock,” says Friedkin. “Filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, and others would argue, and I with them, that there’s something special you get from the quality of film. I grew up with film and want to shoot with it.

But ARRI does a great job of getting the look of film more than others. Plus these are dependable cameras, easy to use, with older lenses that adds to the feel and look. But it was important to me that the film have a certain filmic quality, a texture to it, and not be overly saturated.”

Production Design by Arthur Max (The Martian, Gladiator); Editing by Victoria Boydell (Twelve Monkeys); and Composed by Johan Söderqvist (Let the Right One In).

In addition to Pearce, Bang and Krieps, the film also features, Roland Møller (Land of Mine), August Diehl (A Hidden Life), Olivia Grant (All the Money in the World), and Adrian Scarborough (1917, Gosford Park).

Running time is 118 minutes.

Dan Friedkin occupies a unique spot in the American landscape, as an entrepreneur, philanthropist, environmental preservationist, pilot, and CEO of Gulf States Toyota Distributors — which he founded with his father, philanthropist, Grand National auto company owner and film stunt pilot Thomas Hoyt Friedkin.

Friedkin is the Principal and Co-Founder of Imperative Entertainment which develops, produces and finances original & branded entertainment focusing on film, television and documentaries. Friedkin has executive produced the Academy Award® nominated and Palme d’Or® winning film The Square and produced the Academy Award® nominated All The Money In TheWorld. This past year, Imperative released Clint Eastwood’s TheMule.