Bezeten - Het gat in de muur (1969)

Surinamese-Dutch director Pim de la Parra (1940-2024) died on Friday, 8 September 2024, at the age of 84. The director of such films as Blue Movie (1971) and Wan Pipel/One People (1976) died in Paramaribo after a short illness. To commemorate him, we repost a film special on his directing debut, the Dutch-German thriller Bezeten - Het gat in de muur/Obsessions (1969), which premiered at the Filmweek Arnhem, the first Dutch Film Festival. This series of rare cards was published by Galeries Modernes, a Dutch department store chain, to promote both the festival and the film. Interesting Filmcredit is the name of one of the film's scriptwriters: Martin Scorsese.


Dutch card by Galeries Modernes for Filmweek Arnhem. Photo: Scorpio / Centrafilm. Dieter Geissler in Bezeten - Het gat in de muur/Obsessions (Pim de la Parra, 1969).


Dutch card by Galeries Modernes for Filmweek Arnhem. Photo: Scorpio / Centrafilm. Alexandra Stewart and Dieter Geissler in Bezeten - Het gat in de muur/Obsessions (Pim de la Parra, 1969).

A little hole in the wall

In 1968, German actor-producer Dieter Geissler had a job for the young Martin Scorsese who was in Amsterdam and had recently filmed some scenes here for his debut Who's That Knocking at My Door (1968). Geissler asked the 25-year-old Marty to refine his Dutch Peeping Tom script, which he wanted to produce in the Netherlands.

A painting falls off the wall in a rented room in Bezeten - Het gat in de muur/Obsessions (Pim de la Parra, 1969). The tenant, Nils (Dieter Geissler), a doctorate student in medicine, looks through the little hole in the wall to what is happening in his neighbour's room.

What he sees makes him forget his textbooks quickly. It's not just the sex that generates his curiosity. Soon he witnesses events that point towards a crime. As he becomes more and more entangled in the web of mystery, his fiancee, Marina (Alexandra Stewart), a young journalist, receives an assignment to report a murder case.

Bezeten - Het gat in de muur/Obsessions is the first Dutch English spoken film, and the first German-Dutch co-production since the Second World War, in which Germany had occupied the Netherlands. It was called Besessen: das Loch in der Wand in Germany and quite a box office hit there. The sexy thriller was sold to 64 countries.

Dieter Geissler later (co-)produced such films as Ludwig (Luchino Visconti, 1973), Die unendliche Geschichte/The NeverEnding Story (Wolfgang Petersen, 1984) and Sleepy Hollow (Tim Burton, 1999). Another remarkable credit of the film was the composer of the score: Alfred Hitchcock buff François Truffaut recommended composer Bernard Herrmann to director Pim de la Parra and the famous old maestro indeed wrote the score for this little and uneven thriller.


Dutch card by Galeries Modernes for Filmweek Arnhem. Photo: Scorpio / Centrafilm. Marijke Boonstra in Bezeten - Het gat in de muur/Obsessions (Pim de la Parra, 1969). Marijke Boonstra(1949) also appeared in the Scorpio productions Blue Movie (Wim Verstappen, 1971) and VD (Wim Verstappen, 1972).


Dutch card by Galeries Modernes for Filmweek Arnhem. Photo: Scorpio / Centrafilm. Tom van Beek in Bezeten - Het gat in de muur/Obsessions (Pim de la Parra, 1969). Tom van Beek (1931-2002) later also appeared in such films as A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough, 1977) and Soldaat van Oranje/Soldier of Orange (Paul Verhoeven, 1977).

A sex and psycho-suspense mystery

Bezeten - Het gat in de muur/Obsessions was written and directed by Pim de la Parra (1940-2024), a then young Surinamese-Dutch film director and producer. Bezeten - Het gat in de muur/Obsessions, was his feature debut and he described his film as a 'sex and psycho-suspense mystery'. Between 1967 and 1976, De la Parra made a series of films with his companion, Dutch film director Wim Verstappen under their independent production company Scorpio Films.

Their next film, Blue Movie (Wim Verstappen, 1971) starring Hugo Metsers, created a sensation. It was one of the most erotic films of its time, showing nudity with a realism that confounded critics and censorship authorities. The film became a huge box office hit in The Netherlands and was exported successfully.

Their later films included Frank en Eva/Living Apart Together (Pim de la Parra,1973) starring Willeke van Ammelrooy, Alicia (Wim Verstappen, 1974), Dakota (Wim Verstappen, 1975) with Kees Brusse, and Mijn Nachten met Susan, Olga, Albert, Julie, Piet & Sandra/My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga & Julie (Pim de la Parra, 1975). In 1976, Pim de la Parra directed Wan Pipel/One People, the first feature film from Suriname.

Filmweek Arnhem, where Bezeten - Het gat in de muur/Obsessions was presented in 1969, was the first international film festival in the Netherlands. It was organised once every two years from 1955 by the Dutch Cinema Association. In the years following the first edition of Arnhem Film Week, several film festivals were established in the Netherlands. In 1983, Film Week Arnhem - which was biennial - was organised for the last time.

Galeries Modernes published the cards in this post to promote both the festival and the film. This department store chain in the Netherlands originated from the Grand Bazar Français. The last branches were closed in 1984, a year after the Filmweek Arnhem had stopped.


Dutch card by Galeries Modernes for Filmweek Arnhem. Photo: Scorpio / Centrafilm. Dieter Geissler in Bezeten - Het gat in de muur/Obsessions (Pim de la Parra, 1969).

Sources: Eye, Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.

William Russell

Willam Russell (1884-1929) was a popular American actor of the silent screen. He became a star in Western comedies and appeared in over two hundred silent-era motion pictures between 1910 and 1929. He also directed five of them in 1916 and produced two through his own production company in 1918 and 1925. Russell died already at age 44 in 1929.


British postcard in the Pictures' Portrait Gallery, no. 96. Photo: The Fox Film Co.


French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 92.


French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 247. Photo: Hoover Art Co, Los Angeles.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 857/1, 1925-1926. Apex Film.

Biograph, Thanhouser, Mutual

William Russell was born William Francis Lerche, in the Bronx, New York, in 1884. He was the son of Charles Russell, at various times a clergyman and professor at Fordham University, and Clara Russell, a well-known stage actress. At the age of eight, Russell already started acting on stage. The boy appeared in vaudeville sketches and plays in New York City. His stage career stopped when he was 16 and became an invalid.

Thanks to rigorous physical therapy, he became well after six years and became an amateur boxing champion. Russell studied law at Fordham University. He started a law practice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but it wasn't particularly successful. He tried a variety of other jobs including bookmaker and boxing instructor before deciding to give the stage a shot. He acted with Ethel Barrymore in 'Cousin Kate' on Broadway and appeared with many of the top stars of the day, including Chauncey Olcott and Cathrine Countiss. He toured the country in various stock productions.

In 1910 he started to act in New York at the Biograph Company. His debut was the short film The Roman Slave (D.W. Griffith, 1910). He stayed nine months at Biograph, although he was used mostly in small parts. He switched to the Thanhouser company, which put him in quite a few of its productions. His brother Albert Russell also appeared in several of his films. His star status grew, and he performed in the short films David Copperfield (Theodore Marston, 1911) and The Star of Bethlehem (Lawrence Marston, 1912), the latter with Florence LaBadie and James Cruze. With LaBadie and Cruze, Russell switched to Mutual in 1913, where he acted in several films. In 1915 he moved to the American Film Company, whose films were distributed by Pathé Exchange.

At American, he was in the serial, The Diamond from the Sky (Jacques Jaccard, William Desmond Taylor, 1915-1916), which in later years was his best remembered role. One of his co-stars was Charlotte Burton. They married in 1917 but divorced four years later. Under the aegis of American, Russell started his own company William Russell Productions, for which he made such films as Hobbs in a Hurry (1918), Hearts or Diamonds (1918), Up Romance Road (1918), Brass Buttons (1919), When a Man Rides Alone (1919), and Where the West Begins (1919); all directed by Henry King. Often these were Western comedies, with Eileen Percy, Winifred Westover, or Charlotte Burton.

In 1919 Russell moved to California, to start working for Fox Film, where he debuted in The Lincoln Highwayman (Emmett J. Flynn, 1919). By then Russell was a star, and his films were draped around his star persona. The posters for his films confirm this. His thick, dark eyelashes were very distinctive, as was his rich, wavy hair. His former co-star Eileen Percy had moved with him to Fox, and they acted together in Leave It to Me (Emmett J. Flynn, 1920).


Spanish card by La Novela Semanal Cinematográfica, no. 98.


French postcard by Editions Filma, no. 126. Photo: Fox Film.


British postcard in the Cinema Stars series by Lilywhite Ltd., no. C.M.405 B. Photo: Fox Picture Stars.


French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 140. Photo: Hoover Art Co., L.A.

Vitagraph, Universal, Fox

William Russell co-acted with actress Helen Ferguson in Show with Fire (Emmett J. Flynn, 1920). The two married in 1925, after a six-year romance. At Fox, Russell made seven to eight films a year between 1919 and 1923, with directors such as Flynn and Scott Dunlap. He expanded his Western hero reputation with other genres such as modern dramas and comedies.

In 1923, Russell had the male lead, Matt Burke, the rough sailor, in the First National production Anna Christie, directed by John Griffith Wray and Thomas Ince, and with Blanche Sweet in the title role. The film, faithful to Eugene O'Neill's play, was a fine film with a great part for Sweet. Unjustly, the film has come to stay in the shadow of its later 1930 sound version with Greta Garbo. Presumed lost, the film was found in Russia and is now available with English Intertitles. Eugenie Besserer plays the old alcoholic, played by Marie Dressler in the sound version.

Russell freelanced with various Californian companies such as Vitagraph, Universal and Fox. It also meant he was often an antagonist of the female or male lead, e.g. in The Blue Eagle (John Ford, 1926). He was still the male lead in the dramas Before Midnight (John G. Adolfi, Henry Ginsberg, 1925), and Big Pal (John G. Adolfi, 1925), produced by his own company.

In 1927 Russell started to act in a series of films at Warner Brothers, first in The Desired Woman (Michael Curtiz, 1927), in which he was the co-star of Irene Rich. By now, he was often cast as a tough gangster opposite the leads, as in Brass Knuckles (Lloyd Bacon, 1927), though he also was a sergeant in the frozen North woods in Danger Patrol (Duke Worne, 1928).

Russell was in a part-talkie, The Midnight Taxi (John G. Adolfi, 1928). His first and practically only full dialogue film was Girls Gone Wild (Lewis Seiler, 1929) with Sue Carol. William Russell died in Beverly Hills, California, in 1929, from pneumonia. He is entombed in the Great Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Love, at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale. His brother, director Albert Russell, died two weeks later from pneumonia.


British postcard by Cinema Chat. Photo: Fox.


Swedish postcard by Förlag Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1087. Photo: A.B. Svenska Biografteatern, Stockholm.


Swedish postcard by Förlag Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1088. Photo: A.B. Svenska Biografteatern, Stockholm.


Swedish postcard by Förlag Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1089. Photo: A.B. Svenska Biografteatern, Stockholm.

Sources: Thanhouser, Wikipedia (English) and IMDb.

Cate Blanchett

Australian actress Cate Blanchett (1969) is one of the best performers of her generation. She is known for her versatile work in independent films, blockbusters and drama. She has received two Oscars, four British Academy Film Awards and four Golden Globes.


British postcard by GB Posters, Sheffield, no. PC 0710. Photo: New Line Cinema. Cate Blanchett as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003).


German postcard by Gallery Salz und Silber. Photo: Simon Annand. Caption: Cate Blanchett. Albery Theatre, Plenty, 1999.


Australian freecard by AvantCard for HQ, no. 3146. Photo: Lorenzo Agius / Public, London. Caption: Cate Blanchett, Playing Hard To Get.

Purely positive reviews for her roles

Catherine Élise ‘Cate’ Blanchett was born in Ivanhoe, a suburb of Melbourne in 1969. Her American father Robert DeWitt Blanchett Jr. was a Texas naval officer who became an advertising executive, and her Australian mother June (née Gamble), was a property developer and teacher. They met when Robert's ship broke down in Melbourne. Cate is the second of three children, with an older brother and a younger sister.

When Blanchett was ten, her father died of a heart attack, leaving her mother to raise the family. During her teenage years, Cate had a penchant for dressing in traditionally masculine clothing, and went through goth and punk phases, at one point shaving her head. After high school, she began a degree in economics and fine arts at the University of Melbourne but dropped out after one year to travel overseas. While in Egypt, Blanchett was asked to be an extra as an American cheerleader in the Egyptian boxing film Kaboria (Khairy Beshara, 1990). In need of money, she accepted the job.

On returning to Australia, she moved to Sydney and enrolled at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1992. After her studies, she joined the Sydney Theatre Company. There she starred in ‘Top Girls’. In 1993, she won two major theatre awards, the Newcomer Award from the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle for her role in the musical ‘Kafka Dances’, and the Rosemont Best Actress Award for her role in David Mamet's ‘Oleanna’, in which she starred opposite Geoffrey Rush. Blanchett moved into television. She starred in the popular series Heartland (1994) and Police Rescue (1994). She received purely positive reviews for her roles and her television and theatre careers prospered.

In 1997, Blanchett made her film debut in the American-Australian production Paradise Road (Bruce Beresford, 1997). In this prisoner-of-war drama, she starred as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during World War II opposite Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. She won the Australian Film Institute's Best Actress Award for her second film, the romantic comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie (Cherie Nowlan, 1997). Her role as eccentric heiress Lucinda Leplastrier in the romantic drama Oscar and Lucinda (Gillian Armstrong, 1997), opposite Ralph Fiennes, got her attention from abroad.

In 1998, Blanchett played the role of young Queen Elizabeth I of England in the British drama Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur., 1998). The film received eight Oscar nominations, including one for Best Actress, for Blanchett. She lost the Academy Award to Gwyneth Paltrow, but she did receive a Golden Globe. The following year, she acted in such films as Pushing Tin (Mike Newell, 1999), An Ideal Husband (1999) and The Talented Mr Ripley (Anthony Minghella, 1999), starring Matt Damon as Tom Ripley.


Australian Freecard by AvantCard, no. 6391, 2002. Photo: FilmFour. Cate Blanchett in Charlotte Gray (Gillian Armstrong, 2001).


Spanish postcard by Memory Card, no. 741. Cate Blanchett in The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001).


Australian Freecard by AvantCard. Photo: Touchstone. Image: a poster of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004) with Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Angelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Owen Wilson, and Bud Cort.

A wonder of acting

More international roles in a wide variety of international films followed for Cate Blanchett. In the new century, she did mystery in The Gift (Sam Raimi, 2000) with Keanu Reeves, comedy in Bandits (Barry Levinson, 2001) with Billy Bob Thornton and Bruce Willis, and drama in Heaven (Tom Tykwer, 2002) with Giovanni Ribisi.

She reached a whole new audience with the role of the elf leader Galadriel in Peter Jackson's Blockbuster The Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003). Later, she played the role of Galadriel again in the story that precedes The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit trilogy: An Unexpected Journey (Peter Jackson, 2012), The Desolation of Smaug (Peter Jackson, 2013), and The Battle of the Five Armies (Peter Jackson, 2014).

She played the title role in Veronica Guerin (Joel Schumacher, 2003) and played Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004) opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. For this role, she won the Oscar for Best Female Supporting Actor. Roger Ebert lauded the performance, describing it as "delightful and yet touching; mannered and tomboyish". In 2004, she played a pregnant journalist in the adventure comedy-drama The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004) starring Bill Murray as Steve Zissou, an eccentric oceanographer who sets out with his crew to exact revenge on the ‘jaguar shark’ that ate his partner Esteban. During the shooting of the film, she was also pregnant in real life.

After this, she returned to Australia for the film Little Fish (Rowan Woods, 2005) in which she played an ex-drug addict. She acted opposite Brad Pitt in the acclaimed psychological drama Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006). For the psychological thriller Notes on a Scandal (Richard Eyre, 2006) opposite Dame Judi Dench, she was nominated for an Oscar in the ‘Best Supporting Actress category. In 2007, she played the role of Queen Elizabeth for the second time, in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007). That year, she also starred as Jude Quinn, one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan in the experimental film I'm Not There (Todd Hayes, 2007), for which she was awarded a Golden Globe. Roger Ebert: "That Blanchett could appear in the same Toronto International Film Festival playing Elizabeth and Bob Dylan, both splendidly, is a wonder of acting." Next, Blanchett appeared in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), as the villainous KGB agent Col. Dr. Irina Spalko. That year, she also starred alongside Brad Pitt in David Fincher's Oscar-nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).

Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton became co-CEOs and artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company. In 2009, she returned to acting in the theatre with the Sydney Theatre Company. In 2010, she starred as Lady Marion opposite Russell Crowe's titular hero in Ridley Scott's epic Robin Hood. Blanchett won an Oscar in 2013 for the lead role of Jasmine in the tragicomedy Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013). Blanchett also starred as Lydia Tár, a fictional renowned conductor, in Tár (Todd Field, 2022). Her performance received rave reviews. For the performance, Blanchett won her second Volpi Cup for best actress, her fourth Golden Globe Award and her fourth BAFTA Award. Subsequently, she received her eighth Oscar nomination. In 2023, Blanchett co-starred in the Australian drama film The New Boy (Warwick Thornton, 2023), which she also produced. It follows a young Aboriginal Australian orphan boy who is brought into a Christian monastery, run by a renegade nun, where he begins to question his faith and loyalty to his heritage. In 1997, Cate Blanchett married playwright Andrew Upton. They have three sons together and adopted a daughter in 2015.


German postcard by Universal Pictures.de for the DVD release. Photo: Universal. Publicity still for Elizabeth: the Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007).


German postcard by Universal Pictures.de for the DVD release. Photo: Universal. Publicity still for Elizabeth: the Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007).


German postcard by Universal Pictures.de for the DVD release. Photo: Universal. Publicity still for Elizabeth: the Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007).


German postcard by Universal Pictures.de for the DVD release. Photo: Universal. Cate Blanchett and Clive Owen in Elizabeth: the Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007).

Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English) and IMDb.