Katie Tippel

Katie Tippel is a 1975 film by Paul Verhoeven. The film is based on the memoirs of Neel Doff and was the most expensive Dutch film produced up to that time. The film was a box office success taking in 1,829,116 admissions in the Netherlands. The film begins in 1885 at Stavoren, a small town on the outskirts of the Netherlands, and follows the journey of Katie's family to Amsterdam, where they hope to escape the grinding poverty of their native town by finding work in the capital. Upon their arrival Katie manages to secure employment at a dye-works, but is fired when she refuses to have sex... with the company director. She manages to find a job at a hat shop, where, during a business trip to a brothel, she discovers her older sister Mina is working as a prostitute. Later that evening, back at the hat shop, she is brutally raped by the owner and, as an act of revenge, smashes the shop window. Weeks go by, during which Katie's father struggles to make ends meet working in a factory and Mina begins a slow descent into alcoholism.
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