Zwartboek

A Dutch film from 2006 taking place during the last few months of the German occupation of the Netherlands.

It tells the story of Rachel Stein, a Jewish woman who, after her hiding place got bombed and her family got killed after being ambushed when trying to reach liberated territory, becomes involved with the Hagueish resistance. She dyes her hair blonde, changes her name to Ellis de Vries and seduces the Hauptsturmführer of the local Nazi security service for spy-purposes. This gets her an administrative job at the HQ, where she comes across the man responsible for killing her family.

Following this is romance, more escape attempts, and betrayal, continuing after the Allied tanks are rolling in.

Paul Verhoeven's first Dutch film after more than twenty years of Hollywood.

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Tropes used in Zwartboek include:

• All Issues Are Political Issues: Drinking to the Queen is, if you're a Communist.
• America Wins the War: Averted. The Allies seen are either Canadian or British, who were actually assigned the job of advancing into the Netherlands and Northern Germany; the Americans were further south.
• Anti-Villain: Müntze
• Back-Alley Doctor: Dr. Hans Akkermans, seemingly one of the morally just, a doing-the-best-with-what's-available type rather than the skeevy, barely competent sort.
  • Of course this turns out to be a lie--Akkermans was selling information on his clients to the Germans
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Müntze was a good-looking man while Franken, well, not so much.
• Berserk Button / Disproportionate Retribution: Theo is ultra-Christian and can't bring himself to kill. Even if you shoot at and strangle his friends, Theo won't kill you. Set up wealthy Jewish families for death, Theo won't kill you. Blaspheme, Theo will kill you.
• Bilingual Bonus: Multilingual, really. One will hear Dutch, German, English, and Hebrew.
• Black and Grey Morality: While a few of the Nazis and collaborators are portrayed as flat-out vile, the Hauptsturmführer is a friendly Nazi willing to negotiate a truce, and no one on the good side really comes out shining, not even the devout Christian.
  • Made blatantly clear once Ellis has been identified as a collaborator: her captors keep her and the others in what look like horse pens with nothing but a bucket, line them up to yell abuse at them, strip them naked, and even empty a huge barrel of excrement) on her. This stops when Hans and the Canadians catch wind of it, though.
• Bodybag Trick: A somewhat more oldfashioned variation, with people crossing checkpoints using coffins, deathly make-up, and stories of contagious diseases. Doesn't work for Hans. After getting caught, it's made into a deathtrap by screwing it shut all nice and tight-like.
• The Cameo: Theo Maassen is one of the post-liberation abusers of collaborators.
• The Cast Showoff: All the songs sung by Rachel/Ellis are sung by Carice van Houten herself.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Müntze isn't married, though he used to be.
• Dye or Die: Rachel has to bleach her black hair to pass as Ellis. All of it. The audience is treated to a scene in which part of the job is being done. It's not the part that involves the hair on her head.
• Dressing as the Enemy: In order to get into SD HQ.
• Fake-Out Make-Out: Between Ellis a member of the resistance group during a trainwide identity check.
• Friendly Enemy: Müntze, while a Nazi officer and therefore firmly on the wrong side of things, is a friendly, kind man trying to do good.
• Friend or Foe:
• I Did What I Had to Do: All over the place.
• Idiot Ball: If you're a former Nazi and a woman often seen to fraternise with Nazis, going back to a place where people will recognise you as such shortly after the liberation might not be such a good idea. And yet...
• Inspired By
• It Got Worse: Pretty much the whole plot, and that's saying something with a movie where the lead's whole family was killed in the first ten minutes.
• Kill'Em All: Hans Akkermans attempts to kill everyone from the resistance who might identify him as The Mole. He almost succeeds.
• La Résistance
• The Mole: Doctor Hans Akkermans, though Rachel/Ellis is initially suspected to be one.
• Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: Doctor Hans Akkermans again. Seems a good chap bravely fighting for the cause until we find out he wasn't quite that.
• Nazi Gold: The money Franken stole from the Jews he lured to their deaths. Possibly better described as Plunder as he didn't hand it over to his superiors and the Reich as he should have.
• Not So Different: The way the Dutch treated their collaborator compatriots (or people said to be collaborators) immediately after the liberation was terribly harsh. They got called on it by Hans and an allied military man and were made to leave.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Kautner.
• Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?: He's not.
• Pay Evil Unto Evil: The man pretending to be a resistance member to lure Jews eager to leave occupied territory to their doom gets shot by the resistance when kidnapping him fails. Franken gets killed by Hans Akkermans on his getaway boat when he attempts to leave the country with the valuable things he stole from the corpses of Jews. After being found out, Hans attempts to escape the country although Rachel and the former resistance leader catch up with him and leave him to suffocate in a coffin.
• The Reveal: Doctor Hans Akkermans, a guy pretty high up in the resistance group and initially lauded as a hero by the people after the liberation, betrayed everyone and delivered entire families of Jews to the nazis.
• Run for the Border: Rachel and her family tried to get to a liberated part of the country by boat. This was a set-up, organised by people who wanted to kill the Jews and take their valuables. Only Rachel survived and she did not manage to make it across.
• Shot At Dawn: Müntze. No last minute heroic rescue.
• Someday This Will Come in Handy: Ellis' knowledge of how to cure an insulin overdose (by consuming massive amounts of sugar)
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Ellis and Müntze.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Theo, a devout Christian, ends up shooting a collaborator because he was very upset by the amount of blasphemy uttered by said collaborator.
• Whole-Episode Flashback: At the beginning Ronnie meets Rachel in Israel, some ten years after the war, which leads Rachel to remember certain events. After the final 1945 scene we return to Israel where we see her family and find out that the kibbutz was founded by reclaimed money the Nazis stole from Jews.
• World War Two