Warffum 22.05.62

Directed by Louis van Gasteren

Promotional film for the former Dutch post and telecom company PTT. The occasion was the complete automation of the Dutch telephone network on 22 May 1962. Warffum in the province of Friesland was the last village to be connected. The film follows a number of people in various parts of the country as they make phone calls. The wife of a pastry chef in Maastricht reports a malfunction; an accountant in Amsterdam calls his girlfriend to say he’s absconded with the cash; and an engineer at the delta hydraulic works receives a call telling him that he’s now a father. The PTT’s engineer, working at the central switchboard in Utrecht, links all these scenes together. The film gives a great impression of the prim-and-proper Netherlands of the 1950s and early ’60s, with its sweet, bouncy ’50s style and the appropriate voice-over commentary.