Putney Swope

The museum for film and the art of the moving image in the Netherlands. Visit the exhibition or cinema and discover our collection with more than 50.000 films.

Eye Filmmuseum

7 February Eye is closed

still from The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, US 2013)

still The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, US 2013)

still from Fight Club (David Fincher, US/DE 1999)

still Fight Club (David Fincher, US/DE 1999)

poster Putney Swope (Robert Downey, US 1969)

still from Putney Swope (Robert Downey, US 1969)

still Putney Swope (Robert Downey, US 1969)

still from Der siebente Kontinent (Michael Haneke, AT 1989)

still Der siebente Kontinent (Michael Haneke, AT 1989)

Eye Filmmuseum seen across the river IJ © Marcus Koppen

Eye Filmmuseum, © Marcus Koppen

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David Fincher’s tense thriller – based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk – 
about men breaking out of their humdrum office existence. Bare knuckle fighters in search of masculinity.

“How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a 
fight?” To answer that question, disaffected office clerk Jack (Edward Norton) and oddball Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) set up an illegal fight club.
Unlike the impresarios of bare knuckle boxing of the 1930s, Jack and 
Tyler want to scrap it out for honour, courage, guts and masculinity. The sleepy existence of the feeble-bodied office clerk is due for an overhaul. It appears there are plenty of young men who want to kiss boredom goodbye by beating the daylights out of each other. Suddenly, fight clubs are booming.

Fight Club

exclusiveScreeningsInEye

This satire about the American advertising profession by director Robert Downey is a cult phenomenon. The brand new chairman of an advertising agency replaces all the white board members with Black Power activists. Anarchic comedy; its highlight a series of hilarious fake commercials.

Putney Swope is the only African-American on the board of a major Madison Avenue advertising company, who is voted in as chairman. Accidentally, because all the other board members voted for him, thinking no one else would. Swope (dubbed using the director’s voice which creates a surreal effect) rebrands the company Truth and Soul, Inc. whilst gleefully wrecking the business.

Film directors have used fiction to show how humanity relates to nature, in every genre. Think, for instance, of disaster films, ones about pandemics, underwater creatures that can talk or plant-based life forms who colonise the minds and bodies of earth’s inhabitants.

Cinema Ecologica

Haneke’s clinical portrait of an average Austrian family realising how worthless money and possessions are, and arriving at the ultimate conclusion. Nicht bremsen it says on the carwash. The perfect metaphor for life in a consumption-driven society.

The father’s name is Georg, the mother’s Anna and the child is called Eva. Pretty standard really. Father works hard for a security company, mother is an optician and the child goes to school.
In three chapters Haneke paints a claustrophobic portrait of a family trapped in a constrictive pattern. Ultimately seeking almost mystical salvation in the automatisms of a fully functional, consumption-oriented existence, in which human contact proves impossible.

Der siebente Kontinent

Scorsese’s hyperactive stockbrokers’ satire about the rise and fall of the slick, money hungry Jordan Belfort is a critique of contemporary capitalism’s greed where stockbrokers’ moral compasses go awry as soon as the millions come in.

Scorsese turned his adaptation of fraudster/stockbroker Jordan Belfort’s book into a fever dream featuring Leonardo DiCaprio in great form.

Putney Swope

Robert Downey / US, 1969 / 84 min.

This satire about the American advertising profession by director Robert Downey is a cult phenomenon. The brand new chairman of an advertising agency replaces all the white board members with Black Power activists. Anarchic comedy; its highlight a series of hilarious fake commercials.

This is part of

Special screenings

Fight Club

Der siebente Kontinent

The Wolf of Wall Street

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Cinema Ecologica