Feature film
Fanfare
Bert Haanstra · 1958
Synopsis
In the village of Lagerwiede, where canals serve as streets, a quarrel between the café owners Geursen and Krijns splits the fanfare Kunst en Vriendschap in two. As a competition approaches, each of the two halves wants to win and anything goes to stop the other from winning, while the mayor and the village's only police officer try to calm tempers. Between the two camps stands a couple who are engaged to be married.
Context
The director was making his first feature film, for which he wrote the screenplay with Jan Blokker; the film was shot at Giethoorn by Eduard van der Enden, to music by Jan Mul, for the producer Rudolf Meyer. Alexander Mackendrick, the director of several Ealing Studios comedies, was engaged as an adviser, and the film belongs more to the tradition of British comedy than to that of Dutch cinema. Hans Kaart played his last role in it, and Giethoorn still owes part of its renown to the shoot.
Who it is for
Ninety-three minutes in black and white, in Dutch. A good part of the comedy comes through the image, cows and ducks on the canal included.
Prizes and reception
Two million six hundred thousand admissions, the country's second biggest success behind Turks fruit; in competition at Cannes in 1959; in the national Canon since 2007.