Steve McQueen’s remarkable documentary “Occupied City” opens with a scene in the grand Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. During World War II, the Nazi-German occupiers held events in the hall, but in 1942, the names of Jewish composers were covered, and Jewish individuals were excluded from concerts and events.
The film then shifts to a boarded-up storefront, the site of a cafe that was among the first in the city to ban Jews in 1940. This sets the tone for the intense and epic chronicle of the fate of Amsterdam’s Jews during the Nazi occupation. The film closely examines 130 addresses, but surprisingly, it does not use any archival imagery. Instead, McQueen uses images of everyday life in contemporary Amsterdam, captured over several years, accompanied by recorded sounds and narration.
McQueen’s choice to solely use contemporary imagery of Amsterdam is effective and conceptually bold. The film immerses viewers in the city’s bustling atmosphere as it traverses different locations and time periods without traditional explanatory elements. For example, the movie opens with a peaceful shot of a hallway in an apartment, with the soothing sounds of a household in the background.