Movie Review – The 4th Man

The 4th Man (1983)
Written by Gerard Soeteman
Directed by Paul Verhoeven

In 1981, the Dutch author Gerard Reve was asked to supply the free book given away during an annual promotion of literacy in The Netherlands. If you bought any Dutch-language book that week, you would get a copy of Reve’s for free. Reve wrote De Vierde Man, a noirish psychological thriller. As a gay man and a Catholic, those themes would often get brought up in his books, this one was a little different as the lead character was bisexual, and the book contained only a brief scene of gay sex. It was apparently too controversial, and the book was dropped in favor of something far more bland & boring. That book has been mostly forgotten, while De Vierde Man was adapted by Paul Verhoeven. The 4th Man would be that director’s final Dutch production until he returned in 2006; in the meantime, he made some of the most memorable 1980s action/farcical films.

The 4th Man tells the story of novelist Gerard Reve (wait a minute!) (played by Jeroen Krabbe), who travels from Amsterdam to Vlissingen to deliver a lecture on his work. Gerard is an alcoholic and sex-obsessed, trying & being unsuccessful in picking up a man on the train. At the lecture, he meets Christine (Renée Soutendijk), a cosmetologist who is filming him. She lets Gerard know the committee who brought him here has also booked him a room at the nearby Hotel Bellevue, and the author finds this place is somewhere he’s been having nightmares about before he ever saw it. Christine invites Gerard over to her home, where they have sex. Afterward, he learns she is a widow thrice, each partner dying in a tragic accident. He also discovers Christine is cheating with him as she has a German lover, Herman, the same man Gerard attempted to pick up on the train. 

Gerard’s religious guilt and ravenous sexuality clash as he tries to use Christine to get closer to Herman. He is continually plagued by visions of an eye falling out of a hotel door and then a human face. There’s also the woman in blue that keeps popping up in these dreams. Herman arrives in town, and he & Gerard become closer until they have sex behind Christine’s back. Gerard becomes convinced that she plans to make Herman her husband and then kill him, staging an accident. Is he right, or has this constantly drinking, manic man lost his mind?

The 4th Man was a wild ride. Firstly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bisexual man presented this way in a film. His sexuality is never remarked on by anyone; it’s entirely accepted that he has an attraction to both men & women. Verhoeven is a director known to never shy away from sex & violence in his films, and you can see that already being true in his Dutch work. There’s never any discomfort surrounding those elements or the frequent male nudity. I find it insanely weird that in America, we still have adult men who behave like morons if they see a penis in a movie. It just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. 

While watching this film, I kept thinking of Mulholland Drive, but I don’t believe either director was really influencing the other. Verhoeven and David Lynch feel like entirely different planets, possibly in the same solar system. Much of The 4th Man hinges on the almost supernatural tension built up by the strange hallucinations Gerard keeps having. He seems to be able to see into the future as he’s envisioning places he’s never been to or even heard of before he gets there. That’s why his daydreams near the film’s end leave us wondering. He sees Christine being responsible for each of her husband’s deaths, and he’s been accurate about other things previously. However, he’s also a drunk, and what we see may not be as linear as we think. 

Verhoeven was also a seminary student, so there are overt religious symbols all over this thing. The woman in blue is clearly meant to be a stand-in for the Virgin Mary. When Gerard first sees her on the train, she peels an orange and then holds the peel in a ring like a halo behind her child’s head. Gerard also watches a crucifix in a church transform from Jesus to Herman in swim briefs, whom he then fondles. This feels par for the course with Verhoeven, always attempting to provoke the audience with a shocking image here or there. He’s very interested in challenging these “sacred” symbols’ roles in our lives by intertwining them with fundamental, primitive acts. It feels like a true erotic thriller before that term was attached to cheap, poorly made Cinemax feature films. 

I found the shift from the waking world to the visions cleverly done. The film has some fantastic practical effects and transitions that would stand up to many pictures now. It’s also a hilariously funny picture that never takes itself too seriously. You can feel the actors’ awareness of the provocative nature of the story, but they never wink at the camera or stop being earnest about their characters. Jeroen Krabbe is outstanding in the lead role; very emotive and charismatic. He feels like one of those European actors that should have crossed over to Hollywood film successfully at some point but never did. 

The film’s ending is abrupt, with the story feeling like it hasn’t been fully explored. It works for the type noir storytelling style, but it leaves you with many questions. It is almost like another Lynch film, Lost Highway. Overall, it’s a sampler of the things Verhoeven would continue to reference throughout his career: fixations on a perversion of Christian imagery, exploitative sex scenes, sudden outbursts of explicit violence, and images that stick with you. The thing I have come to love about Verhoeven movies is that you will feel something about them; you can’t watch and stay neutral. It’s a style of filmmaking that feels hard to find now, but it was so refreshing to watch.