Land of the Zuider Zee (1951) User Reviews

Easy For Him To Say

[boblipton · 5/10 · 28 March 2020]

James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras under cinematographer Keith Covey to take some pictures. As you may guess from the title, it's mostly about the Zuider Zee: to be precise, the fishing villages along the Zee, vanishing as the Dutch put up dikes and drain the sea, converting what for more than a thousand years had been water into land.

Fitzpatrick offers some trite words of sympathy for the fishermen who can no longer go to sea. Yet, in his words, they must give way to progress, and learn to farm instead. Easy for him to say; in another four years he would be out of a job making travelogues. Well, he could rely on his residuals and the travel agency he had developed.

The copy I looked at on Turner Classic Movies this morning was all right in its color elements. However, it was a touch indistinct looking, leading me to believe this was off a 16mm. copy.

TravelTalks

[Michael_Elliott · 26 September 2011]

Land of the Zuider Zee (1951)

** (out of 4)

Fair entry in MGM's TravelTalks series has James A. FitzPatrick traveling to Holland where he takes a closer look at the people and the Zuider Zee. The majority of the running time talks about how fishing is so important to the people as well as the villages and we get to see how modern boats are slowly taking over stuff used for past generations. We see a few children and learn that the reason they have straight hair over their eyes is to block the sunlight. Other bits of trivia include learning about the Flying Dutchman boats, the odd dresses warn and we also learn about the buildings and why different colors of paint are used. We also visit Volendam and Spakenburg. If you're already familiar with the series then you know what to expect but as usual it's the Technicolor that really stands out. Getting to see these images in color were certainly the biggest draw to the series back when these films were released as well as today. I must admit that I found this entry to be more boring than most simply because nothing we're being told was all that interesting. It's pretty much all about fishing yet we really learn very little about it from the point of view of the villagers. As usual, it's great getting to see these locations but that's about all there is here.