The Fourth Man (Holland, 1983) 102 min color DIR: Paul Verhoeven. PROD: Rob Houwer. SCR: Gerard Soeteman. MUSIC: Loek Dikker. DOP: Jan de Bont. CAST: Jeroen Krabbe, Renée Soutendijk, Thom Hoffman. (Rob Houwer Productions)
There are films which walk a tightrope between the sacred and the profane. And there are those like The Fourth Man, in which the sacred and the profane make love to one another. This may be the most perverse fun at the movies since L’Age d’Or, but those whom this film would probably offend would not likely see it anyway. Sexuality, Catholicism, death and insanity are the central themes of this dark carnival ride, which also fascinatingly depicts the blurring borders of reality and illusion. Based on the novel by Gerard Revé, Jeroen Krabbe plays an alcoholic homosexual named Gerard Rev´´e whose already-deteriorating mind crumbles further thanks to his fascination with Christine (Renée Soutendijk), whom he chances upon during his pursuit of another man (Thom Hoffman). Revé compares her to a black widow who mates and kills, as she has been widowed three times, all due to suspicious accidents. Is he number four? Although plentiful in the sex and violence that typifies director Verhoeven’s filmography (especially his later work in America), this near-brilliant exercise works on another level as a larger-than-life comic book (accented with primary colours, especially the colour red, in Jan de Bont’s lush cinematography): enormously entertaining, creepy and sexy, with a weird tongue-in-cheek humour. The round-faced Soutendijk, a strikingly unique screen presence, makes a perfect foil of moral ambiguity. For my money, it remains Verhoeven’s best film. It’s even better than Showgirls!
Originally published in “Short Takes”, Vol. #1, Issue #11. This column, which randomly collected capsule reviews of films, for once had a theme: all the movies were previously broadcast on Jay Scott’s Film International program.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.