A village idiot becomes a fire chief. What could possibly go wrong? (Spoiler: everything.)
Thanks to his actions during a farm fire, the young and naive Dreas is appointed to the local fire department, which awakens various ambitions in him. He constructs primitive watchtowers everywhere and achieves some successes, partly due to the activities of an arsonist. He is then allowed to attend a course at the fire academy in Maastricht. Back in his village, he fails during a fire at the local bakery, where everything goes wrong. Dismissed from his position, he finds new employment as a market vendor with a fire extinguisher he invented.
Acting
Cammermans plays Dreas with beautiful earnest cluelessness
Writing
Satire of bureaucratic promotion that still stings today
Production
Charming low-budget 1960s Dutch countryside aesthetic
Director
Paul Cammermans
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This is classic 'Dorpskomedy'—a uniquely Dutch genre mocking small-town life and provincial bureaucracy that peaked in the 1960s.
Director Paul Cammermans cast himself as Dreas despite having almost no acting experience, reportedly because no one else 'got' the character's specific brand of idiocy.
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