This movie is about a (real life) daily writer of small articles about folk sorrows, Simon Carmiggelt, in Amsterdam. His quality was to notate these stories after listening to those people in bars and in parks, and make it to an every newspaper article every single day, and he sold a lot of books filled with these stories, he was very popular. When Carmiggelt became 70 years of age, someone decided to make this movie as a tribute. It did not worked out that well. Bert Haanstra and his fellow crew made the movie (with a huge cast of AAA actors from Holland at that time)and it did not succeed to be a movie at all. Haanstra, very famous Oscar winner (!) documentary style was in 1983, when the film was shot, also in the range of old people wanting to tell stories for the aftermath, but he had no experience at all making drama (Like: Doctor Pulder Zaait Papavers). The movie is so called Comedy, but there is only ONE laugh in it. Haanstra, and his crew (cameraman Anton van Munster) did a great job to light and motion all frames in the film for that time, the sensitivity of the stories were KILLED by the lack of DRAMA in the photography. So you have an actor, we will frame it, and that's it! They, in that time, were to afraid to create reality in front of their lens! So they filmed real people in the park, asking permissions and signing quit claims and film them again (for more better frames). All stories are played by actors doing monologues, Carmiggelt, playing himself as the listener, only listen and don't interact at all. The film is shot as a masterpiece of decent cadrage and lightning, but it lacks anything from warmth, glamour, sex, decadency. It is all not there. However the stories they selected for this movie (around 12) none of them is dramatic enough to catch your brain afterwards. It ends with a scene that the writer is photographed with all his grand children (not for the first time by the way, for the books it has happened before) as it is really a BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE for a 70 year old famous writer. So this is a very boring product I would not call a movie. It is more like a TV special for a celebrity. What you could learn from it nowadays (30 years later) is that you never should documentary filmers get loose on somebody's written content that fits well in the papers for years. Better let some folks rewrite it and make some good drama. And get the original writer's name on the credits in a proper size as the creator and collector of all those great ideas and stories. It is a pity that this movie does not match the quality of the great writer Simon Carmiggelt at all, while it is filmed by one of the greatest documentary filmers Bert Haanstra, who I admire because of his (oscar winning!) editing skills.
