By Eric Kohn

It was late at night in Holland when Steven Spielberg called Paul Verhoeven, paving the way for one of the most insubordinate creative minds in the history of the movie business.

“He didn’t realize it was three o’clock in the morning,” recalls Verhoeven, now 68, looking back on the impetus that led to his immigration—and, eventually, indispensable Hollywood guilty pleasures like Basic Instinct. “I had a very nice conversation with him. He said, ‘Come to the United States. Your country’s much too small for you. You have to work here.’ It took me some time to conquer my fears, [but] finally I came, and he introduced me to several studios.”

American audiences raised on Verhoeven’s inaugural blockbuster Robocop generally don’t realize that, once he reached the United States in the mid-1980s, the director’s overseas career seemed to have reached its zenith. His 1973 sophomore outing, Turkish Delight, an unsettling character study of a sexually depraved loner, made box office history in Holland. In 1977, Verhoeven’s World War II epic, Soldier of Orange, scored a Golden Globe. He was approaching middle age when his first American movie, the medieval adventure Flesh + Blood, hit screens in 1985. Robocop followed three years later.

Black Book, Verhoeven’s latest achievement (see film review on page 22), is a winding espionage tale set in the Dutch Resistance that marries the audacity of his earlier movies with the production values of his American works. Although cowritten in several foreign languages (with longtime Dutch colleague Gerard Soeteman), the action and nail-biting suspense in Black Book carry a distinctly Hollywood feel. “When we were working on the script, I brought a lot of my American experiences with me,” Verhoeven says. “In comparison to movies that we did before ’85, [we decided] to do a more compelling, driving narrative. The rules of drama apply more—the rules of drama being nothing more than trying to keep your audience close to the lesson.”

The lesson Black Book offers isn’t an easy one: Its plot centers on the exploits of Jewish femme fatale Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten), whose family is murdered by the Gestapo during an escape attempt from Holland into Allied territory. Alone and directionless, Rachel becomes a spy for the intrepid Dutch Resistance, assigned to seduce Dutch SD leader Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch, star of the Oscar-winning German movie, The Lives of Others).

After permeating the Nazi perimeter, however, Rachel finds herself drawn to Ludwig, a benevolent victim of his party’s corruption. Somewhere during its dense second act, Black Book becomes a radical love story. Verhoeven claims his intentions were sincere. “I wanted to get away from the idea that every Nazi is the devil, [or] every Arab is a terrorist,” he says. “Every enemy has some humanity.” Valiantly choosing to help the other side, Ludwig earns his pathos despite his Nazi affiliation, a result of the script’s principled approach to its characters.

The redefinition of moral standards recurs without fail in Verhoeven’s movies, but not only through plot. His technique weaves philosophical revelations into low-art aesthetics, engaging viewers in a challenging dialogue that forces them to question social taboos. Unbridled violence and nudity figure heavily in both small dramas like The Fourth Man and the overblown science fiction drivel of Total Recall. Black Book has no shortage of either element (for every lethal shootout, there’s a topless van Houten). This lasting consistency provides the backbone of Verhoeven’s career. Even the infamous dud Showgirls remains permanently fixed to the collective memory of the movies, thanks to the unmistakably vulgar perspective of its creator.

Considering that he studied math and physics in college, it’s no surprise that Verhoeven’s remarkable flair for the cadences of entertainment allows him to decipher the equation of B-movies and redefine their boundaries. Although Hollywood allowed his style to evolve, Verhoeven’s edginess tends to inflame sensitive types. Shortly after the release of Starship Troopers, his wildly satiric take on Robert Heinlein’s futuristic novel, the Washington Post declared the movie fascistic. (“People [now] see Starship Troopers for what we intended it to be,” Verhoeven insists. “A way of taking a [movie] about big spiders, or whatever, and using it as a subversive political tale.”) 

The unlikely romance in Black Book carries greater potential to offend, partly explaining its international production. Verhoeven’s secularized take on global events is a tough sell to puritanical theatergoers (and Academy members, who chose to ignore its spot on the Oscar shortlist). “I used the Holocaust more like a historical effect rather than as a singularity of time and space,” he explains. “I have no obligation to consider one point of history more sacred than another. I can use history however I want.”