Willy Mullens (4 October 1880,

Weesp Weesp () is a city, an urban area in the municipality of Amsterdam and a former municipality in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. It had a population of in . It lies on the river Vecht and next to the Amsterdam–Rhine Canal in an are ...

North Holland North Holland ( nl, Noord-Holland, ) is a province of the Netherlands in the northwestern part of the country. It is located on the North Sea, north of South Holland and Utrecht, and west of Friesland and Flevoland. In November 2019, it had a ...

- 21 April 1952,

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

) was a Dutch producer, director, and promoter of

movies A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

. He is considered to be one of the early pioneers of Dutch cinema, and one of his movies was recently elected as one of only sixteen "Canonical Dutch movies." With his brother Bernardus Albertus (Albert) (20 June 1879, Harlingen - 1941) he started around the turn of the 20th century one of the earliest Dutch

film production Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, casti ...

companies,

Alberts Frères Alberts Frères, founded around 1899, was one of the first film production companies in the Netherlands. The company was founded by brothers Albert (1879–1941) and Willy Mullens (1880–1952); they were the main filmmakers and exhibitors in the ...

. By the second decade of that century he was making documentary films that

premiere A première, also spelled premiere, is the debut (first public presentation) of a play, film, dance, or musical composition. A work will often have many premières: a world première (the first time it is shown anywhere in the world), its first ...

d for royalty. His second company, Haghefilm, dominated the Dutch film market between the two World Wars.

Entrance into the movie industry

Early career

Willy and Albert's father, Albertus Abraham Mullens (30 July 1847

Hoorn Hoorn () is a city and municipality in the northwest of the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is the largest town and the traditional capital of the region of West Friesland. Hoorn is located on the Markermeer, 20 kilometers ( ...

- 1890), alias "A. Alber(t)", and a German by the name of Ahrens Basch had founded a theater company (Koninklijk Nederlandsch Cagliostro-Théâtre Alber & Basch"), specializing in "mysterious and pseudo-scientific spectacles". After Albert Senior's death, their mother Christina Mullens-Verpoort continued to direct the company. Before getting started in the movies, Willy Mullens also worked at a fair in

as a

human cannonball The human cannonball act is a performance in which a person who acts as the "cannonball" is ejected from a specially designed cannon. The human cannonball lands on a horizontal net or inflated bag placed at the landing point, as predicted by phys ...

. He was fired in 1897 when his act failed; he had been knocked out by a

kangaroo Kangaroos are four marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern gre ...

. Christina took her sons to

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, where they saw

Auguste and Louis Lumière The Lumière brothers (, ; ), Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumière (19 October 1862 – 10 April 1954) and Louis Jean Lumière (5 October 1864 – 6 June 1948), were French manufacturers of photography equipment, best known for their ''Ciném ...

's movies in the

Salon Indien du Grand Café Le Salon Indien du Grand Café was a room in the basement of the Grand Café, on the Boulevard des Capucines near the Place de l'Opéra in the center of Paris. It is notable for being the place that hosted the first commercial public film screenin ...

. With financial aid from their mother, they bought a number of those movies; in 1899 they started showing them in the Netherlands in their traveling cinema. They chose the French name "Alberts Frères" for their production company, since the movie business at the time was predominantly French.

Alberts Frères

In 1914, the company started touring the halls and theaters of the country during the winter, and soon became one of the main attractions at fairs throughout the country. 1905 No Pants Dutchman

Besides showing movies, Alberts Frères quickly started making them. Often focusing on comedy, the Mullens brothers pulled practical jokes and filmed them, and along the way generated headlines and built a reputation. Their most successful production is also one of the oldest surviving Dutch fictional movies, ''

The Misadventure of a French Gentleman Without Pants at the Zandvoort Beach ''The Misadventure of a French Gentleman Without Pants at the Zandvoort Beach'' ( nl, De mésaventure van een Fransch heertje zonder pantalon aan het strand te Zandvoort) is a 1905 in film, 1905 early Netherlands, Dutch silent film directed by Will ...

'', which in 2007 was "canonized" as one of sixteen canonical films by the

Netherlands Film Festival The Netherlands Film Festival ( nl, Nederlands Film Festival) is an annual film festival, held in September and October of each year in the city of Utrecht. During the ten-day festival, Dutch film productions and co-productions are exhibited. Be ...

. The six-minute film, consisting of eight scenes, was filmed by Albert and directed by Willy, the latter also playing the lead after the intended actor was not allowed (by his fiancée) to appear pantless on-camera. During World War I (the Netherlands were neutral), the company was hired by Kaiser Wilhelm's Dutch legate to film German children celebrating Queen Wilhelmina's birthday in 1919. The German Bild- und Filmamt (which aimed at the production of propaganda) was to procure copies for the German market, in hopes of maintaining good relations between Germany and the Netherlands; it is not known if that actually happened.

Haghefilm

"Haghefilm" (named for "The Hague") was founded by Willy Mullens in 1914, and quickly established a reputation as the largest and best-known Dutch movie production company. Willy Mullens later became a well-known producer of

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

s; his ''Holland Neutraal: Leger en Vlootfilm'' (1917) received a royal

, in the presence of

Queen Wilhelmina Wilhelmina (; Wilhelmina Helena Pauline Maria; 31 August 1880 – 28 November 1962) was Queen of the Netherlands The monarchy of the Netherlands is a constitutional monarchy. As such, the role and position of the monarch are governed by the ...

and Prince Hendrik. The two and a half hour long movie was the first documentary which attracted a mass audience. It showcased the Dutch

army An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...

and

navy A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...

and was commissioned by the Dutch Minister of War Bosboom, who intended for the movie to rally popular support for Dutch neutrality during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

; on the other hand, the movie, with its display of military might, also aimed to show that the Dutch, despite their neutrality, were not to be thought of lightly. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Haghefilm delivered

subtitles Subtitles and captions are lines of dialogue or other text displayed at the bottom of the screen in films, television programs, video games or other visual media. They can be transcriptions of the screenplay, translations of it, or informati ...

for the Dutch version of the ''

Die Deutsche Wochenschau ''Die Deutsche Wochenschau'' (''The German Weekly Review'') was the title of the unified newsreel series released in the cinemas of Nazi Germany from June 1940 until the end of World War II. The coordinated newsreel production was set up as a vi ...

'', the official German-supplied

newsreel A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, informa ...

. Twice Mullens traveled to the

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies ( nl, Nederlands(ch)-Indië; ), was a Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised trading posts of the Dutch East India Company, which ...

, in 1924 to film for the

oil industry The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The larges ...

, and in 1926 on assignment by the Dutch government, a nine-month trip; his were some of the first images shot in the Dutch colony.Images plus a scene-by-scene description available at The company also produced

cinema Cinema may refer to: Film * Cinematography, the art of motion-picture photography * Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of a moving image ** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking * ...

s, and were an early competitor of

Polygoon The Dutch Polygoon-Profilti was a cinema newsreel company in the Netherlands from 1919 to 1987. It started with weekly news items in the Dutch language, Dutch movie theaters and lasted until 1987 when it finally surrendered to television news sho ...

, the company that operated from 1919 to 1987 and dominated the Dutch market after

Legacy

Besides being canonized by the Netherlands Film Institute and honored as a movie pioneer, Mullens also had a very practical impact on Dutch cinema as one of the founders of the Nederlandsch Centraal Filmarchief (1919), the first audio-visual archive in the Netherlands. The name Haghefilm still lives on in the modern

film laboratory A film laboratory is a commercial service enterprise and technical facility for the film industry where specialists develop, print, and conform film material for classical film production and distribution which is based on film material, such as ...

called Haghefilm, in Amsterdam. Their origins date back to 1926-27, to the lab founded by Willy Mullens in The Hague. Its name was changed to "Color Film Center" in 1977-78, then folded in 1984 due to mismanagement and competition. Four of the employees became directors of their own enterprise and acquired the rights to the Haghefilm name; their lab now devotes itself to working on archival films.

Filmography

*''Holland Neutraal: De Leger- en Vlootfilm''. 1917. *''Petroleum Film''. 1924. *''L'Archipel des Indes Orientales Neerlandaises filme par l'Institut Colonial - Amsterdam...'' and other short films. 1926. *''Zuiderzeewerken''. 1927-1932.

Alphabetical

# Amsterdamsche pleinen en straten (1920) 10:51 # L'Archipel des Indes Orientales Neerlandaises filme par l'Institut Colonial - Amsterdam (1926) # Arnhem en omstreken (1919) 24:48 # Bolsward (1920) 4:22 # De ambachtsheerlijkheid Rijswijk (1920) 8:20 # De bereiding van boter (1920) 27:01 # De bereiding van kaas (1920) 19:50 # De Vechtstreek (1920) 4:36 # Delft (1922) 21:37 # Door Walcheren (1921) 22:31 # Dordrecht, Holland's aelteste Stadt (1926, reel 1 of 3) 12:37 # Een oud keizerrijk (1920) 11:25 # Eindhoven (1920) 7:20 # Enkhuizen (1919) 8:54 # Franeker (1920) 7:25 # Glas-industrie in Leerdam (1918) 14:42 # Harlingen (1920) 5:44 # Heerlen (1922) 21:35 # Het leven der bijen (1917) 25:13 # Het 's-Gravenhaagsche vacantie-kinderfeest (1920) 5:23 # Holland in ijs (1917) 8:35 # Holland Neutraal: De Leger- en Vlootfilm (1917) # Hoorn (1919) 9:09 # In een ver verleden in en om Arnhem (1919) 3:05 # Kampen (1920) 14:15 # Koninklijke Stearine Kaarsenfabriek Gouda (1918) (long version: 23:45) # Koninklijke Stearine Kaarsenfabriek Gouda (1918) (short version: 13:56) # Langs de Maas (1920) 8:16 # Langs Gouwe en Oude Rijn (1920) 5:04 # Leeuwarden (1920) 12:38 # Maastricht (1920) 12:50 # Medemblik (1920) 10:01 # Moderne wegenaanleg te Amsterdam (1927) 56:16 # Mooi Nederland Zeist (1922) 9:09 # Nederlandsche Basalt Maatschappij (1925) 50:13 # Petroleum Film (1924) # Schoonhoven (1920) 8:33 # Sittard (1920) 9:20 # Sneek (1920) 9:15 # Stavoren (1920) 5:20 # Utrecht (1918) 22:16 # Valkenburg (1920) 4:34 # Visschersplaatsen aan de Zuiderzee (1920) 9:14 # Weesp (1920) 8:17 # Werkspoor (1918) 2:19 # Zaltbommel (1919) 10:38 # Zuiderzeewerken (1927-1932)

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mullens, Willy 1880 births 1952 deaths People from Weesp Dutch film directors Dutch film producers Film production company founders