HELP, THE DOCTOR IS DROWNING
Holland, 1974, minutes, Colour.
Jules Croisset, Martine Bijl, Willeke Van Ammerlrooy.
Directed by Nikolai van der Heyde.
Help, The Doctor is Drowning is a Dutch comedy. The Dutch film industry is not particularly large and therefore this comedy is an interesting example of the techniques and the attitudes of Dutch film-making. The film is based on a well-known Dutch novel. It has a certain old world and almost rustic charm as well as knockabout and situation humour. It translates fairly well for an outside audience, but audiences should not expect too much subtlety. It is straight-forward comedy.
1. How entertaining a comedy? For a Dutch audience? For international audiences? The light touch?
2. The conventions of village comedy in terms of character, dialogue, situations? Gentle humour, satire and parody, farce? Which predominated?
3. The contribution of colour photography, Dutch locations, the atmosphere of the period? The light touch of the music? Special comic effects?
4. The presentation of village life, the attention to detail of place, people, types, mannerisms. Sufficiently credible with the strengths and the weaknesses of human nature? Could audiences identify with the village and its people and the way of life?
5. How well did the film delineate the principal characters, their strengths and their weaknesses, their interactions? The doctor and his place in the village, the teacher and the doctor's love for her? Their meetings? The parish priest and his role in the village? His help for the doctor, his not providing a solution? The counterpointing of this plot with the plot of the village builder, the beautiful gypsy? The contribution of the other personages within the village?
6. Which were the most memorable sequences? The humanity and the interrelationships? The comic and farcical situations? The doctor's work? The sequences illustrating the title?
7. How much insight was there into the ordinariness of human nature, the ordinariness of basic day to day situations and the way that people cope? An optimistic view of human nature and of man and his possibilities? The good effect that this kind of optimistic comedy can have on an audience? The value of laughter?
