Tag

A famous scene from Jan Vanderheyden & Edith Kiels De Witte (1934)

After the success of De Witte (1934), Jan Vanderheyden and his German-born concubine Edith Kiel  grew more confident about the future of Flemish film production and decided to try their hand at an operetta film set in Antwerp. The film was a critical failure: not only did the critics question the film’s nerveless script and general amateurism, but also its ‘non-Flemish’ nature and its slavish follow

Schipperskwartier was one of the greatest commercial successes of the film couple Edith Kiel & Jan Vanderheyden. In this scene we see and hear the popoular revue singer and actress Co Flower in the title song of the film. 

The Sailors’ Quarter (1953) is exemplary for the postwar Kiel & Vanderheyden production: music, laughter, romance and drama set in Antwerp. While the harbour is the general setting, typical sets are home-grown working class locales like a pub, a grocery store and a barbershop where locals walk in and out and gossip and backbiting reigns. The dialogues and songs are articulated in Antwerp dialect. Most Kiel

In the hands of Jan Vanderheyden and Edith Kiel, Ernest Claes’ (1885-1968) bestselling novel Whitey (1920) becomes a lyrical Heimat film that glorifies the beauty of Flanders, its countryside and its people. In 1980 the novel was adapted for the screen for the second time. Flemish enfant terrible Robbe De Hert turned De Witte into a symbol of Flemish stubbornness and resistance against authority. Use this link