Jan Koelinga’s debut film De Steeg portrays daily life in a poor neighborhood in the center of inter-war Rotterdam. It opens with shots of buildings representing the modern city—modernist housing, the luxury department store De Bijenkorf—and a rapid montage of fast-paced city life with motorized traffic and hurrying people, before entering an alley—the Schoorsteenvegerssteeg. Here, the rhythm of urban life is much slower-paced; the houses are old and narrow, windows are broken, and the street is dirty. Life takes place outdoors, with children playing in the street, mothers nursing their babies, people meeting for a chat and doing their laundry. Koelinga shows the bad conditions in this poor quarter, but also portrays a humane atmosphere and sense of community, which particularly becomes explicit in a scene of a young man playing his accordion, thereby creating a collective experience. The film’s humanistic style is also underscored by the use of numerous close-ups, presenting the inhabitants as individuals, standing out from the anonymous urban crowds.
Because of this focus on slums, on some level, De Steeg can be seen as a counterpart to Von Barsy’s Hoogstraat (1929). Yet throughout the film, Koelinga’s city symphonietta continues alternating the poor life in the slums with the rapid, modern, and rich city life that lies beyond the end of the alley. With its social realism, De Steeg also recalls László Moholy-Nagy’s city films Impressionen vom alten Marseiller Hafen (Vieux Port) (1929) and Großstadt-Zigeuner (1932).
The film premiered as a silent in 1932 at the cinema De Uitkijk in Amsterdam. In 1933 the Centraal Bureau voor Ligafilms—the distribution agency of the Dutch film society Filmliga—added a score to this ciné-poem, composed by Arthur Bauer.
Koelinga (1906–92), a photographer, filmmaker, and member of the Filmliga, was later strongly criticized for his collaboration on a number of German propaganda films for Ufa under the Nazi regime. Among others, he shot material that was used in Der ewige Jude (Fritz Hippler, 1941).
Eva Hielscher
further reading
Hogenkamp, Bert, De Nederlandse documentaire film, 1920–1940 (Amsterdam: Van Gennep and Stichting Film en Wetenschap, 1988).
Paalman, Floris, Cinematic Rotterdam: The Times and Tides of a Modern City (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2011).
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