If certain visual signifiers of the enemy (Hitler portraits) or of Dutchness (landscapes) appear relatively unchanging throughout the chronology of Dutch war films, then images of everyday life during the occupation embody the opposite: they illustrate the most complex metamorphoses yet encountered in the interpretive analyses of these films. Not only are these transformations complex, they embrace some of the darkest and most sensitive aspects of the Dutch war experience re-calibrated onto film. They propel the boundaries of cultural coping and the subsequent re-writing of history, and this forward momentum occurs more perceptibly here because depictions of ordinary life under occupation, including family, friends, and relationships, are so inherently personal, yet at the same time all-encompassing—for almost no one is without familial bonds. Evolving images of occupied life in its broadest sense include portrayals of extended family members, friends, neighbours, colleagues, and lovers in addition to the more typical household dynamic of parents and children.

This chapter is not only concerned with filmic portrayals of families and friends, or interactions among them; I also examine the home and how that domestic environment—and the invasion of it—is represented. I look at who is shown to have held the family unit together during the five years of occupation, and I address the roles of ordinary women in wartime and the balance of power in the home at a time when the domestic arena became empowered, taking on a critical role. Reactions to the hardships of occupation on a personal and family level are analysed too. These hardships include physical and psychological deprivations of many kinds: famine, poverty, the Hunger Winter, Dutch men forced into German labour camps, torture, sacrifices, family members and friends lost, punishments, and loss of continuity and control in social, economic, educational, and leisure domains. Images of that broader family life are traced within Dutch war films, and it is the shifting countenance of these facets of family life and friendship bonds in the films—a communal, if unconscious, cultural response to Dutch society's altering perceptions about the war—that is my central concern here.