'Black Book' and Women in WWII

Paul Verhoeven the director of such pulpy Hollywood movies as Robocop, Showgirls and Basic Instinct has decided to try his hand at WWII movie making back in his native Holland. Black Book follows the adventures of Rachel Stein, a Dutch Jewish woman through the closing years of the war. After the trauma of Allied air raids and betrayal of an escape plan she joins the Resistance. Here she her sexual assets to seduce, and apparently turn, the commander of the Gestapo in the Hague.

I've never been much for Verhoeven's ham-handed stylings. He seems to think that as long has he provides a mixture of sex and violence at regular intervals, he can keep an audience from thinking any deep thoughts about what he has to say. However, Verhoeven is delving into an growing area of WWII study and writing, the role of women in the war, particularly in the various Resistance movements. Vera Atkins and Virginia Hall probably never used sex as weapon in the model of Verhoeven's heroine, but they were certainly formidable opponents to the Nazis and their collaborators.

Is 'Black Book' at all accurate? No. Is it a turning point for Verhoeven to serious matters (a la Steven Spielberg in Schindler's List)? I doubt it. Will it be entertaining and will it sell tickets? Of course.

And maybe someone walking out of the theatre will go and pick up the biography of Elsa Caspers to see how life really was for a female spy in Holland.