6. Business is Business (1971)
This was the first film feature directed by Paul Verhoeven - a comedy set among the lives of prostitutes in early 1970s Amsterdam. Greet and Nel are two prostitutes who are friends and live and work in the same building. Nel lives with Sjaak, a terrible sponger of a man. She later meets Bob and falls in love. Bob is a bit boring but Nel wants to give up her life of prostitution and it so happens that she is pregnant. She marries Bob. Greet falls for a married man called Piet whom she doesn't charge for sex. When his wife falls pregnant he has to stop seeing her. The film was wildly popular in the Netherlands - taking almost 2,500,000 seats. It is typical of the sort of Euro Sex Comedies of the time and this is long before Verhoeven had found his directorial style that would make him so famous. It is an amusing little diversion but the scenes with the prostitutes with each client feel disjointed - like a sketch show piece stitched together. It doesn't really work as drama nor as comedy. It is a jolly big anachronism of early 70s perviness.