Katie Tippel

The producer cut the politics out of this film. Paul Verhoeven had agreed to it on the basis of a detailed synopsis running the heroine's story in parallel with the social conditions and political unrest of the period. Producer Rob Houwer vetoed that script as too expensive and ordered the focus moved to the personal drama, with most of the social material, including scenes of mass rebellion, removed. The source is Neel Doff's semi-autobiographical writing. Doff wrote about her impoverished childhood in nineteenth-century Holland in French; the texts were merged into a single Dutch volume in the 1970s. Katie moves to Amsterdam with her family in 1881, and she and her sister end up in a brothel to survive. Modelling for a painter, she meets a bank clerk named Hugo, who buys her out of it and then marries a wealthy young woman under social pressure. Monique van de Ven plays Katie and Rutger Hauer plays Hugo, from a screenplay by Gerard Soeteman. It opened in the Netherlands on 6 March 1975. Who it is for: viewers who like Verhoeven's Dutch period and period drama about what climbing costs. Who it is not for: anyone disturbed by sexual violence and exploitation. The excised political strand also leaves the film's social argument unfinished.