Paul Verhoeven’s Cinema of Violence

The first English-language critical study of the films of Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch director of provocative and vividly imagined films such as Turkish Delight(1973), Robocop (1987), Basic Instinct (1992), Showgirls(1995), Starship Troopers (1997), Black Book (2006), and Elle(2016).

Where some audiences find in Paul Verhoeven little more than empty provocation (or, even worse, immoral scandal), Paul Verhoeven’s Cinema of Violencetakes a more careful and nuanced look at this director’s body of work and its penchant for violence of various kinds. Exploring the breadth of this director’s career, this book encompasses everything from his early short works as a student filmmaker in the 1960s to the most recently completed Benedetta(2021), a French-language film based on Judith C. Brown’s 1986 academic volume Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy.

This volume studies a wide range of themes and ideas across Verhoeven’s work, including his cinematic approach to violence, his adaptation of literature, his work in notable genres such as science fiction and the war film, his work with actors and direction of performances, his provocative treatment and representation of sexuality and gender, as well as his intense and frequently baroque cinematic style. It also traces in his work a career-long interest in religion: although an avowed atheist, Verhoeven has been obsessed with the image of Jesus in nearly all his films, a theme in his cinema that dovetails with his 2011 academic study Jesus of Nazareth. Through this comprehensive approach, Paul Verhoeven’s Cinema of Violence offers a passionate, nuanced, and comprehensive critical look at the cinematic output of one of the Netherlands’ - and Hollywood’s - most vital contemporary filmmakers.

Steven Rybin is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato, USA. He is the author of Geraldine Chaplin: The Gift of Film Performance (2020), Gestures of Love: Romancing Performance in Classical Hollywood Cinema (2017), and Michael Mann: Crime Auteur (2013), among other books.