The Forgotten Battle (2020)

Introduction

The Forgotten Battle (Dutch: De Slag om de Schelde) is a 2020 Dutch war drama film directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. that depicts the Battle of the Scheldt in 1944 (refer to World War II). The film follows a Dutch Axis soldier played by Gijs Blom, a British glider pilot played by Jamie Flatters, and a resistance woman from Zeeland played by Susan Radder.

Outline

In September 1944, Teuntje Visser works in the office of a collaborationist mayor in German-occupied Zeeland as the Allies approach from Belgium. While she and her father, a doctor, choose to be neutral, her younger brother Dirk is a member of the Dutch Resistance who is arrested for throwing a rock at a German convoy and is tortured into revealing the names of other Resistance members.

Meanwhile, Marinus van Staveren, a Dutch volunteer in the Waffen-SS Division Das Reich, is reassigned from the Eastern Front to serve as secretary and translator for the German commandant in Zeeland, Oberst Berghof. Marinus grows increasingly disillusioned with the Nazis’ heavy-handed tactics including the execution of civilian hostages. He sympathises with Teuntje and her father as they attempt to negotiate a lighter sentence for Dirk in Berghof’s office. Despite initial assurances that Dirk will be treated leniently, Berghof ultimately orders that Dirk be executed along with the other Resistance members. Marinus tries to pass the news secretly to Teuntje but is spotted by a German officer who reports him to Berghof. As punishment, he is selected to be part of the firing squad for Dirk’s execution and sent back to combat duty.

After Dirk’s death, Teuntje is drawn into the Resistance. Teuntje learns that Dirk had been covertly photographing German artillery positions along the Scheldt river. Teuntje steals a tidal map of Sloe Channel from the mayor’s office which shows a deep section of the channel that would allow Allied forces to safely cross. She and her best friend, a Resistance member named Janna, are tasked with smuggling Dirk’s photographs and the map to the Allied forces advancing on Walcheren island.

Elsewhere, Glider Pilot Regiment Sergeant Will Sinclair, Lieutenant Tony Turner, and Free Dutch Forces soldier Henk Sneijder crash-land in a flooded estuary in Zeeland after their Airspeed Horsa glider is hit by anti-aircraft fire during Operation Market Garden. Turner is wounded during the crash-landing. After wading through the marshes, they shelter at a farmhouse whose owner informs them that Operation Market Garden has failed and that the Canadian Army have entered Holland. They decide to head for the Canadian lines. They take shelter in another house but are abandoned the next day by the other members of their unit. They are then attacked by German soldiers, and Turner is killed. Henk, exhausted and unable to swim, is left behind by Sinclair, who reaches the Allied line and joins Canadian forces advancing on Walcheren Island.

Prior to the Battle of Walcheren Causeway, Teuntje is captured while helping Janna escape on a boat with Dirk’s photos and the map. Janna is shot and mortally wounded but makes it to the Allied lines before dying. Marinus takes part in the German defense of Walcheren Island while Sinclair participates in the Allied assault. The Allies first attack upfront, sustaining heavy casualties, before the map provided by a dying Jenna allows the troops to cross the water and attack from the side, overriding the Germans. During the battle, Sinclair and Marinus cross paths and hold each other at gunpoint, but the two men decide to let each other go.

As the Germans retreat, Marinus kills a German soldier attempting to rape and execute Teuntje but is shot during the struggle. A grateful Teuntje tends to him, but Marinus dies of his injuries. Sinclair and other Allied soldiers find Marinus’ body next to Teuntje, who walks away as the town is liberated.

An epilogue mentions that the Allied victory at Walcheren enabled the reopening of the port of Antwerp to Allied forces and helped contribute to the Liberation of the Netherlands on 05 May 1945.

Cast

Gijs Blom as Marinus van Staveren
Jamie Flatters as William Sinclair
Susan Radder [nl] as Teuntje Visser
Jan Bijvoet [nl] as Doctor Visser
Tom Felton as Lieutenant Tony Turner
Coen Bril as Henk Schneijder
Theo Barklem-Biggs as John
Scott Reid as Nigel
Marthe Schneider [nl] as Janna
Ronald Kalter as Dirk Visser
Justus von Dohnányi as Oberst Berghof
Mark van Eeuwen as Pim den Oever
Richard Dillane as Group Captain Sinclair
Gordon Morris as Sergeant Mackay

Production

Development

Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr. directed the film. Alain de Levita, Paula van der Oest, and Mark van Eeuwen served as producers. EO, NPO, Belgian company Caviar joined the project as co-producers. The film received funding from CoBo, Netherlands Film Fund, Flemish Audiovisual Fund, and the Belgian Tax Shelter. It was announced in November 2019 that Netflix would also co-produce, making The Forgotten Battle the company’s first Dutch film.

Filming

With a budget of around €14 million, it is the second most expensive Dutch film made after Black Book (Dutch: Zwartboek) in 2006. It was shot primarily in Dutch and English with some German. Principal photography began in Lithuania where a large part of the movie was filmed and continued in the Netherlands and in Belgium. Locations in the Netherlands included Middelburg, Zeeland and the port city of Vlissingen. Some parts of the battle were filmed in and near Limburg, Belgium and in the Sint-Truiden area.

Release

A first trailer was released in November 2020. The film had a premiere in Vlissingen on 14 December 2020. It was originally scheduled for a theatrical release in the Netherlands a few days later, but it was postponed to 05 June 2021. EO broadcast the film on 24 December 2021 and it was streaming on Netflix as of 15 October 2021. The movie ranked in Netflix’s all-time top 10 non-English language movies with 60.93 million hours watched in the first 28 days on the platform.

The film finished in third place in the list of most successful films in the Netherlands in 2021 with just over 507,000 tickets sold. It was the highest Dutch film on the list, with No Time to Die and Fast & Furious 9 in first and second place respectively. The film won the Platinum Film award for box office success.

Trivia

Filming the battle scenes in the Netherlands turned out to be near-impossible due to all kinds of environmental issues (certain wild animal populations that couldn’t be disturbed, no permission for explosive effects, etc.).
- Another problem was that modern windmills had been placed around the original site of the titular battle, and money spent on digitally removing them would be better spent on adding planes or destroyed villages.
- The problem was solved by going to Lithuania, which offers tax benefits for movie productions.
- A piece of unused farmland was rented there from a farmer, who told production that they could do with it as they pleased.
- An entire dam was built there specifically for the battle scene.
This being a Dutch movie with a limited budget of EUR14 million (by comparison: Saving Private Ryan (1998) cost around EUR60 million), director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. saved money by doing copious rehearsals of the battle scene with only the actors and stunt people, and no crew.
- This allowed him to thoroughly choreograph the action before the cameras rolled, managing to film the scene in a mere three days (the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan took six weeks to shoot).
The German MG-42 heavy machine gun was universally feared by allied soldiers.
- It could fire 1500 rounds per minute, and was nicknamed “Hitler’s buzzsaw” because its firepower could easily rip bodies apart.
- When sound designer Herman Pieëte learned that surviving veterans described its sound as “ripping linen”, he mixed the actual sounds of ripping linen and paper into the soundtrack.
The sound design of the film was extensive: an average Dutch feature film at the time contained about 500-600 separate audio tracks, while this film has well over 1700.
- Some sounds were arranged by Charles Maynes, who had been a sound effects editor on Starship Troopers (1997) and sound designer on Letters from Iwo Jima (2006).
- The sound of the Russian T-34 tank also had to be bought because there was only one good recording of it in existence.

Production & Filming Details

Director(s):
- Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Producer(s):
- Alain De Levita … producer
- Kestutis Drazdauskas … co-producer: Lithuania
- Bert Hamelinck … co-producer
- Robin Kerremans … co-producer
- Frank Klein … executive producer
- Rita Lo … assistant line producer
- Elwin Looije … line producer: pre-production
- Gerrit Martijn … line producer
- Patricia McMahon … line producer: pre-production
- Jacomijn Nijhoff … co-producer: Evangelische Omroep
- Donald Taylor … line producer
- Paula van der Oest … executive producer
- Mark van Eeuwen … executive producer
- Dimitri Verbeeck … co-producer
Writer(s):
- Paula van der Oest … (screenplay)
- Paula van der Oest … (story) and
- Jesse Maiman … (story)
- Pauline van Mantgem … (co-writer) and
- Reinier Smit … (co-writer) and
- Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. … (co-writer)
Music:
- Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch
Cinematography:
- Lennert Hillege … director of photography
Editor(s):
- Marc Bechtold
Production:
- Levitate Film
- Caviar Films (in co-production with)
- Evangelische Omroep (EO) (EO, in co-production with)
Distributor(s):
- September Film (Netherlands, 2021)(theatrical)
- Netflix (World-wide, 2021)(VOD, video)
- Dolphin Medien (Germany, 2024)(Blu-ray)
- Dolphin Medien (Germany, 2024)(DVD)
- Epic Pictures (Canada, 2024)(video)
- Epic Pictures (United States, 2024)(video)
- Evangelische Omroep (EO) (Netherlands, 2021)(EO, NPO1, TV)
- Source 1 Media (Netherlands, 2022)(Blu-ray)
- Source 1 Media (Netherlands, 2022)(DVD)
Release Date: 14 December 2020 (Premiere, Vlissingen, Netherlands).
Running Time: 124 minutes.
Rating: 15.
Country: US.
Language: English.