The film was finished in April 1943 and was screened for the crew and for its backers at the Asta cinema on Sunday morning, April 25. Many leading NSB officials were present. "It was black with NSB people," according to Holla. These dignitaries included Tobie Goedewaagen, Secretary General of DVK and, of course, Van Genechten. According to Van Putten, both were very happy with the final result.

However, the DVK's Propaganda Council was not completely enthusiastic about the film. The fox in particular posed a problem: "From a National-Socialist point of view ... this character was not chosen correctly." (Apparently, the German authorities also had some problems with the film.) On the other hand, the Council praised it for its technical excellence and for its "magnificent" drawings.

About Reynard the Fox was never released, which seems strange after so much money was lavished on its production. Why it was never shown publicly is still a mystery. Perhaps the objection to the fox's character was so great that the Dutch National-Socialist Party and the DVK decided not to screen it. Believing in Reynard's positive characteristics may have been difficult, as foxes have traditionally been stereotyped in animated films as untrustworthy characters. How can the prototype of the "bad guy" suddenly turn into a "hero"?

Perhaps the delay in finishing the film meant that such ferocious anti-Semitic propaganda was no longer deemed necessary. By 1943 most Dutch Jews had already been deported. The "Great Propaganda Action" against the Jews was over by 1941, so maybe the film was completed too late to be useful. Also, Reynard seems to offer an intellectual kind of anti-Semitism that was perhaps too abstruse for most filmgoers.

No documentation has been found to support either of these hypotheses. It is known, however, that some other films made by Nederland were also never released. In wartime Holland, it was not altogether uncommon that expensive and ambitious propaganda films found no audience. One related consequence was the rapid liquidation of the studio's animation unit after the film's one screening. Beginning in June 1943, the animators who worked for Van Putten were put into two newly-formed Dutch units of German studios: Bavaria Filmkunst and Fischerkösen, each of whom had bought a part of the company from Van Putten. In a letter, Van Putten complained that his anti-Semitic film could not be completed according to the wishes of the German authorities because, contrary to promises made when the two German enterprises started their business in The Hague, the new studios refused to cooperate.

Van Putten said that he took the only print of the film to Berlin, where he gave it to the widow of German film director Edgar Beyfus. (Van Putten and Beyfus had made a film together before the war.) The negative remained at Geyer-Werke, in Berlin, one of two labs in Europe that could process color film.

Robert van Genechten, author of the book. Photo Groeneveld Collection, Rotterdam

The section of the film (which lacks sound) acquired by the Dutch Film Museum came from Germany, where it had been stored at the Budesarchiv. This incomplete internegative (the first of possibly two reels of picture only) of Reynard, consists of the credits, the introduction of the principal characters and the beginnings of the anti-Semitic plot.

In spite of its rather crude anti-Semitism, the film, from a technical point of view, is very well made and a prime example of high quality Dutch animation: the animals move naturally and the well-preserved colors are magnificent. The first movement of the animals comes as something of a surprise, since they do not move when they are first introduced. (This kind of introduction resembles the way in which actors and characters were sometimes introduced in films of the silent era.) From a technical point of view, the Reynard film might well be associated with the Disney film made in the same period, also about animals, but with a rather different plot: the touching film in which a mother elephant teaches her son to take his first steps.

Egbert Barten is a film historian who has published extensively on the Dutch film industry in the 1940-45 period, and is currently finishing a book with Mette Peters on Dutch animated films in the 1940-44 period. Gerard Groeneveld teaches at the International School of Economics Rotterdam, and is the author of Nieuwe boeken voor den nieuwen tijd (Amsterdam, 1992), a study of the first Dutch National Socialist publishing company, De Amsterdamsche Keurkamer.