Format: Video from The Magic Flashdrive on laptop.
Paul Verhoeven’s De Vierde Man (The Fourth Man) is what critics would call “a sexy, stylish thriller,” and it really is that. It’s also very strange. Pushed in one direction, this is a modern film noir. Pushed the same distance in a different direction, it’s a supernatural thriller. As it stands, it’s most definitely a psychological thriller with a significant dose of noir elements. But it also deals with religion, fate, and premonition.
Gerard Reve (Jeroen Krabbe—the character is named after the author of the book this film is based on) is a somewhat alcoholic author starting to be bothered by bizarre dreams. He heads off to the south of Holland for a speaking engagement at a literary society, mostly because it’s evident that he needs the money desperately despite his success as an author. The talk goes pretty well, but he discovers himself drawn to a woman named Christine Halslag (Renee Soutendijk) who has the unnerving habit of filming him with a hand-held camera. Christine can be generously described as “striking” and more realistically described as “weird looking.”
