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 & Vanderheyden films were quite successful in Flanders. Together with the in ‘detaxation law’ (introduced in 1952), this success enabled the Antwerpse Film Onderneming (AFO) to produce 16 films in between 1952 and 1961.
A poster for a screening of Schipperskwartier in Leuven. (www.cinemaleuven.be)