Louis Bouwmeester
The devil has arrived in Amsterdam, hell-bent on bombarding a poor girl, a wealthy banker and a young painter with great misfortune. This film is presumed lost.
Snuders, an avaricious boat-owner, insures his boat The Joanna against accident very much above its value, and then conspires with Verhoff, a notorious drunkard and unprincipled scoundrel, to lose it at sea. The latter agrees to carry out the plan for a consideration of 300 florins, and the bargain is concluded. To lend colour to the affair, Snuders also engages young Tijen as crew, and, despite the entreaties of his sweetheart, Trunski, the latter signs on. Out at sea Tijen discovers a paper which warns him of the villainy which is on foot. But Verhoff acts quickly, and, whilst the young sailor is sleeping in the cabin, the drunkard locks him in, fires the boat, and himself makes good his escape.
Jean-Marie Hardouin is an old man who once was notorious because of the iron grip he exerted on his family but now he is lame. He whiles away his days in a chair in the house of his son and daughter-in-law. He has to see how his adulterous daughter-in-law plots to murder her two foster children and her husband. Jean-Marie can't intervene and because he can't talk he can't warn his own family. Misfortune, tragic developments, and a fatal ending dominated many of the early Dutch fiction films.
