Het geheim van Delft

Jan van Dommelen is trying to rediscover the lost formula for the oh-so-shiny glaze used in Delftware ceramics. His experiments run on and on, when he isn't being pestered by Willem van der Veer, a shoddy and evil competitor for his position. His employer, however, has lost a lot of money recently. Despite maintaining a front, he is just about broke. He turns down van Dommelen's request for money. Van Dommelen would spend his own money, but he has none. Instead he has an infant child and two older daughters: Annie Bos, who is studying music, and along the way will fall in love with the boss's son; and Lily Bouwmeeester, who turns out to be the hero of the movie.

Van Dommelen finds a suicide note bemoaning an evil life and three thousand guilders. He takes this money and buys supplies for his next experiment. Huzzah! It works. But as he emerges from the laboratory, he discovers the body of his employer. He is seized for his murder and sentenced to ten years in prison.

As I have indicated above, it will be Mevrouw Bouwmeeser who solves all of the problems in the end, although Mevrouw Box will have her own problems. They are both assailed by van der Veer. He gets a job at the factory by claiming he has the secret of the glaze, and then tries to get it out of the ladies by burning down their house and chasing Mevrouw Bos over a waterwheel and up the vanes of a windmill. That chase is the highlight of that movie.

The copy I looked at was restored in the middle of the 1990s, but several minutes are stll missing and might help the overall effort. What remains is a programmer, not particularly good, but certainly not awful, and enlivened by sequences presented in color.