In the small village Dorpveld at the border triangle between Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, the inhabitants and notables celebrate the customs union between two countries. At the same time, smugglers fear that they will lose their steady ‘income’ because of the union, and the customs officers are worried about their jobs, too. As a result, the smugglers and the customs officers reach out for an agreement to maintain the borders. In a second narrative, the film tells the unfortunate love story between the factory worker Siska, who loves the Belgian smuggler Pierre, but he has set his heart on the German girl Ilse.
Written by Paul-Henri Spaak’s brother Charles, this film holds an important place in the history of Belgian cinema. It is Henri Storck’s first full-length fiction film and it is the first long fiction film shot in Belgium after the war. The film crew as well as the actors and actresses came from the four participating countries. Although well received by critics, the film was not a box-office success.

Henri Storck recalled the making of "Das Bankett der Schmuggler" in a speech at the Jean Vigo Federation in 1988:
"It was those in the Marshall Plan who were responsible for filmmaking, Stuart Schullberg [sic] and Lothar Wolff who suggested I make a documentary film about the birth of the Benelux. Given the magnitude of the project I thought of calling on the talents of a great scriptwriter and was lucky enough to convince the most talented of the bunch at the time, Charles Spaak, to participate in this adventure.
We immediately got in touch with the Benelux committees in Belgium whose president, Mr. Van Dorpe agreed to take on the production of the film, with the European Centre for Culture in Geneva, directed by Denis de Rougemont who put us in touch with the president of the European Union of Federalists, Dr. Eugène [sic] Kogon of Frankfurt. With a view to producing the film, Dr. Kogon created a film production company in Frankfurt called Europa Film, which took on the role of co-producer with Belgium where heroic efforts were made to ensure the financing of a fiction film. Spaak and I had in effect given up the idea of a documentary, thinking that a fiction film would be more likely to capture the attention of the audience and interest them in an unusual problem. The financing problems were all the more troublesome in that the measures for encouraging Belgian filmmaking didn’t see the light of day until about ten years later. Spaak and I undertook an in-depth investigation in political, industrial, employer and trade union circles in Belgium and in Holland, and came to some bitter conclusions about the psychological reactions to the economic union […]"
Source: Fonds Henri Storck, Brussels

Genre
Feature Film

Credits
Production Country: Germany / Belgium
Film Production Company: Teve-Film, Brussels; E-Film Europäische Film GmbH, Frankfurt / Main
Commissioning Institution: Unknown
Director: Henri Storck
Producer: Fritz Aeckerle; Léon Canel
Script: Charles Spaak; Henri Storck
Cinematography: Eugen Schüfftan; Raymond Picon-Borel
Film Editing: George Freedland; Hilde Grabow
Music: André Souris
Actors & Actresses: Françoise Rosay, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Christiane Lénier, Yves Deniaud,

Technical Information
Original Film Format: 35 mm
Duration: 108 minutes
Colour: Black & White

Benelux, Customs Union, Trade, Bureaucracy

The HAEU does not own rights to the films. Copyright or other restrictions applying to the material should be assessed by the user. Any copyright violations resulting from the use of documents held at the Historical Archives are solely the user’s responsibility. More about copyright

Dutch, French, German

Video

Fonds Henri Storck, Brussels

The film was digitised from the copy located at the Fonds Henri Storck, Brussels. An extract is available onlinee at: Fonds Henri Storck, (2019)

Clemens, Gabriele ; Goergen, Jeanpaul : Die Filmaktivitäten der Europabewegung, in : Clemens, Gabriele (ed.) : Werben für Europa. Die mediale Konstruktion europäischer Identität durch Europafilme, Paderborn : Schöningh 2016, pp. 129-190, p. 177 ; and Clemens, Gabriele : Werben für Europa. Öffentlichkeitsarbeit für den europäischen Integrationsprozess am Beispiel des Films ‘Das Bankett der Schmuggler’, in : König, Mareike ; Schulz, Matthias (eds.) : Die Bundesrepublik und die europäische Einigung 1949-2000. Politische Akteure, gesellschaftliche Kräfte und internationale Erfahrungen. Festschrift für Wolf D. Gruner zum 60. Geburtstag, Stuttgart : Franz Steiner Verlag 2004, pp. 311-326.