Among Western European countries, all of which were occupied by the Nazis during World War II, the Netherlands suffered the greatest number of persecutions against Jews, both in percentage and in absolute number. In Amsterdam alone, more than 60,000 people, out of 101,800, lost their lives in five years. With Occupied Citya long documentary lasting more than four hours, Steve McQueen pays tribute to them by telling their story, one address at a time.
The project seems eminently personal for the director of Shame (2011) and 12 Years a Slave (2013). Not only has the Briton lived in the Dutch capital for more than 25 years, he also shares his life with Bianca Stigter, screenwriter and author of the book Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945, which inspired the film. And it was when he learned that his daughter’s school had been an interrogation center for the SS and his son’s, a prison that he imagined the form, he revealed to the media.
Said shape is very particular. Over footage of locations in Amsterdam in the early 2020s, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, a female voiceover recounts what happened there during the occupation. It systematically begins by naming an address, which we first see in establishing shot (overall shot which establishes the relationship of the camera to space). Then, she tells us, for example, that such a house served as a hiding place for a Jewish family or that such and such a theater was used as a gathering point for deportations, while we see people candidly occupying the buildings in our time.
A priori, this system appears to be effective. It is not for nothing that the Auschwitz concentration camp or the Anne Frank House are open to tourists today: the places of the Holocaust arouse affects that give meaning to the expression “duty to remember “. However, in four hours and 26 minutes including an intermission when the film is presented in theaters, without archives or interviews, the process is exhausted. Contrary to Holocaust by Claude Lanzmann (1985) where the titanic duration (9 hours 26) allows a complete and striking portrait, several stories ofOccupied City drown in the mass. Especially since certain image-text associations make us downright uncomfortable.
Exits from the room and snoring
Psychogeography
From the first scenes, images taken during the pandemic pose problems. Between two sequences where the narrator explains to us how a theater and the Rijksmuseum were occupied by the Nazis, we are shown demonstrations against health measures. Suddenly, an advertising banner appears in the sky, pulled by a plane. It reads: “Taken hostage emotionally and financially.” The demonstrators’ demands seem all the more absurd when juxtaposed with the fate of the Jews during the war. The parallel is strange. Same impression, an hour after the start of the film, during silent scenes where we see drone images of the City, at night, during a curfew, “the first since the war”.
Despite the relevance of each story-place, we cannot help but deplore several redundancies, unforgivable for a film of such length. McQueen nevertheless makes for an interesting sort of story arc. Unlike the book, which is structured into different districts, his film begins with intimate stories — of citizens, merchants — and gradually moves toward public spaces, such as parks and hospitals. A segment on Jewish schools which were emptied of their students, deported to the camps, with images of daycare centers, proves particularly striking.
These schools, like several other locations in the film, were demolished, while other sites were chosen to erect memorials.
More than a documentary on the horrors of the Holocaust, Occupied City becomes at the very least a precious testimony to how, for better and for worse, we understand the history and psychogeography of places.