Paul Verhoeven like Dario Argento and Brian DePalma, is a film-maker who likes to answer his critics via his work. After having worked in films that were approached in a more realistic and naturalistic milieu (1973's 'Turkish Delight', 1980's 'Spetters'), Verhoeven found in a novel by Gerard Reve a perfect collective of ideas that suited what would become his cinema; dark eroticism, religious imagery, the Catholic tension of woman worship and misogyny, death, and the grip ideas of the fantastique can have on the mind. He completely embraced the 'Giallo' approach and blends sex and death in a delicious cocktail of suspense and imagery in 'The Fourth Man'.
A tale of seduction and paranoia is told via a writer of lurid pulp fiction, Gerard Reve (yes the novelist names the lead character after himself!). Appearing as a keynote speaker at a book seminar, he responds to a questioner who asks how he can still be a Catholic with all science has taught us; "Being Catholic means having imagination!" Catholic, homosexual and alcoholic, he is bursting with emotional tension, ripe for hysteria; "I lie the truth, until I no longer know whether something did or didn't happen."
Over the opening credits a spider traps flies in its web, religious iconography is introduced as the web is spun over a crucifix. Verhoeven quickly establishes the fact that Reve has a dark psyche and darker fantasies, such as strangling his male lover with whom he shares a mutual loathing; he quickly and constantly slips into 'Walter Mitty' like daydream fantasy. When he takes a train to the seminar illustrates well Reve's mind-set; he reads a billboard 'Jesus Is Everywhere,' as a young mother boards the train. She offers her son an 'apple' and fashions a circle out of the peel, which as she manipulates it for a moment resembles a halo over the baby's head.
Linking sex and death and self-destructiveness is achieved when Reve asks a gentleman at the station if he has come to collect him. The man replies "I doubt it" as a coffin is wheeled towards him; the following discussion establishes the corpse had a beautiful death, as he was about Reve's age and died in bed "on top of some senorita in Spain."
As a homosexual it is curious as to why Reve becomes interested in Christine Halsslag. She does have short hair, but is also voluptuous; he covers her breasts with his hands when they first have sex; as he ejaculates he exclaims "through Mary to Jesus!" Coincidence comes into play when Reve discovers Christine is seeing Herman, a man that Reve bumped into before catching his train. He wants to meet Herman; "What a body what a piece!"
Reve essentially ends up as the requisite 'Giallo' outsider, who finds himself in the position of trying to solve a mystery; 'did Christine kill her previous husbands?' His sight is certainly brought into question. Verhoeven has fashioned a world that at times borrows the lurid surrealism of Argento's 'Suspiria', and photography that frequently mimics the soft focus over saturated white flaring of a DePalma film of this era. There is a nice bit of eyeball gouging in a car accident that would be at home in an Umberto Lenzi 'Giallo.'
Loosely remade by Verhoeven in Hollywood as 'Basic Instinct'; he considers 'The 4th Man' to be a 'spiritual prequel.'
A tale of seduction and paranoia is told via a writer of lurid pulp fiction, Gerard Reve (yes the novelist names the lead character after himself!). Appearing as a keynote speaker at a book seminar, he responds to a questioner who asks how he can still be a Catholic with all science has taught us; "Being Catholic means having imagination!" Catholic, homosexual and alcoholic, he is bursting with emotional tension, ripe for hysteria; "I lie the truth, until I no longer know whether something did or didn't happen."
Over the opening credits a spider traps flies in its web, religious iconography is introduced as the web is spun over a crucifix. Verhoeven quickly establishes the fact that Reve has a dark psyche and darker fantasies, such as strangling his male lover with whom he shares a mutual loathing; he quickly and constantly slips into 'Walter Mitty' like daydream fantasy. When he takes a train to the seminar illustrates well Reve's mind-set; he reads a billboard 'Jesus Is Everywhere,' as a young mother boards the train. She offers her son an 'apple' and fashions a circle out of the peel, which as she manipulates it for a moment resembles a halo over the baby's head.
Linking sex and death and self-destructiveness is achieved when Reve asks a gentleman at the station if he has come to collect him. The man replies "I doubt it" as a coffin is wheeled towards him; the following discussion establishes the corpse had a beautiful death, as he was about Reve's age and died in bed "on top of some senorita in Spain."
As a homosexual it is curious as to why Reve becomes interested in Christine Halsslag. She does have short hair, but is also voluptuous; he covers her breasts with his hands when they first have sex; as he ejaculates he exclaims "through Mary to Jesus!" Coincidence comes into play when Reve discovers Christine is seeing Herman, a man that Reve bumped into before catching his train. He wants to meet Herman; "What a body what a piece!"
Reve essentially ends up as the requisite 'Giallo' outsider, who finds himself in the position of trying to solve a mystery; 'did Christine kill her previous husbands?' His sight is certainly brought into question. Verhoeven has fashioned a world that at times borrows the lurid surrealism of Argento's 'Suspiria', and photography that frequently mimics the soft focus over saturated white flaring of a DePalma film of this era. There is a nice bit of eyeball gouging in a car accident that would be at home in an Umberto Lenzi 'Giallo.'
Loosely remade by Verhoeven in Hollywood as 'Basic Instinct'; he considers 'The 4th Man' to be a 'spiritual prequel.'
